Small Electric Car May Usher In Big Changes

An anonymous reader sends us to a profile in CNNMoney.com on a Norwegian car company that is building a compact, plug-in electric car, the Think City, that will go on sale in Europe early next year. It could hit US markets in 2009. The CEO is working with Silicon Valley VCs and with Google, Tesla Motors, PG&E, and Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway. Plans are to sell the car only on the Web. No dealers, cheap manufacturing plants, and a battery pack that you lease, not buy — there's potential here for shaking up the auto industry the way Dell did PCs.

The only problem

[Dachannien]

...with selling such a tiny car in the US is that "Escalade" is French for "trash compactor".

Re:More like the big changes on terror

[mh1997]

Has anyone else noticed that they now have robot planes that can be flown from the other side of the world, and shoot missiles at people on the ground, but yet the average citizen's flying car is yet to materialize? Now we're being told that they have to make cars smaller to make 'em run on batteries, even with fuel cell technology etc. Seems to me that there might be something going on here besides technological limitations. I wonder when governments realised it would be hard to track and chase people who could travel in three dimensions easily?

Has anyone else noticed how many people run out of gas on the roads everyday? At least they are on the ground and not falling out of the sky when they do it!

Who killed the (Norwegian) electric car?

[TeknoHog]

Killed? It's not dead, it's pining for the fjords.

Re:Big Changes, huh?

[cayenne8]

"Well, i would hope that maybe the battery is swappable, meaning one could possibly own two batteries and be able to rotate (maybe if they take overnight to charge, etc) or be able to choose a different battery vendor after their lease expires."

I dunno, they may rename this to the iCar...in which case it does not have a user replaceable battery.

:-)

Re:Big Changes, huh?

[sunking2]

It was pretty cool. I drove ours to high school for a bit. Wow, a catch like you must have had all the girls lined up :)