Th!nk! Can This Eco-friendly Car Start an Electronic Revolution?

For pint-size designs, these electric cars seem to dream of a global revolution where many fear to tread, or have tried with not very impressive results. And think about it, these cars are 100% recyclable!

But Th!nk Global, yes, think with an exclamation mark, a Norwegian company buoyed by undisclosed funding injection by Silicon Valley venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and RockPort Capital Partners, is rolling out the Ox, Open and City in North America within three years after a gallant start in Europe and I can’t stop to think when they’ll ever get to Africa.

Think cars are gas-free, city cars that will start selling in the US next year but the actual mass roll out is slated for sometime in 2011, and the company has recently opened its North American division to steer the promising mad drive from the gas pumps.


Think, with more than 17 years of experience in developing and producing electric vehicles, designs, develops, manufactures and markets environmentally friendly vehicles and technologies. There are about 1,200 Think concept vehicles driving on European, mostly Norwegian, roads today.

http://ecoworldly.com/2008/07/09/thnk-can-this-eco-friendly-car-start-an-electronic-revolution/



Norwegians and the Dutch are the tallest people in Europe and taller than the average Americans

Due out in 2010/2011, the Ox is about the size of a Toyota Prius. It can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 8.5 seconds, travel between 125 and 155 miles on a single charge, and its lithium-ion batteries can be charged to 80% capacity in less than an hour.

Solar panels on its roof power equipment such as the radio, navigation system, instrument panel, and air conditioning — even while parked with the car switched off.

The Ox is fully connected: GPS, mobile internet, a customizable digital dashboard, as well as a whole host of other modern features, all link the driver to his or her surroundings.





http://gas2.org/2008/06/23/thnk-ox-an-electric-car-with-style-and-smarts/

I mean this car doesn't really exist does it? We have our best minds working on making the battery tech work but we're not there yet :eyes:

Subaru lithium vanadium oxide based lithium ion battery, promising double the energy density of a conventional lithium ion battery (lithium cobalt oxide and graphite).

In the lab, Lithium vanadium oxide anodes, paired with lithium cobalt oxide cathodes, have achieved 745Wh/l, nearly three times the volumetric energy density of conventional lithium ion batteries


Powering the vehicle is Subaru's own high-capacity vanadium battery, capable of storing two or three times more energy than other lithium-ion batteries of the same approximate weight. When adding into consideration the car's aluminum body, Subaru expects the car to be able to travel 200 kilometers on a single battery charge

Also exciting is the car's 15-minute quick carge potential, which gets the batteries charged to 80% capacity. A full charge taks about eight hours when connected to an AC outlet at home.




http://www.worldcarfans.com/9071009.003/subaru-reveals-g4e-electric-concept

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/sns-green-think-car2008jun25,0,2415931.story

Think's journey to the world market has been similarly full of detours. The company (previously called Pivco) began in 1991 and by 1998 had built more than 1,000 small and charismatic electric runabouts, sold mostly in Norway (where you still see a few on the road). Then, in 1999, the company was bought by the Yankee giant Ford Motor Co., which was scrambling at the time to comply with California's Zero Emission Vehicle mandate, essentially requiring automakers to build fleets of electric vehicles. Ford renamed the company Think Nordic and began a complete redesign of the car. When, in 2003, the American automakers succeeded in modifying California's mandate, Detroit's flirtation with electronic vehicles ended. General Motors Corp. famously killed the EV1 program, and Ford sold Think to a Swiss electronics firm.

"The lawyers stopped us," says Ole Fretheim, the factory's manager. Think went bankrupt in 2006.

The irony is that Ford had already poured $150 million into the Think City project, engineering among other things the car's rigid steel space frame, the crash structure. If and when it comes to the U.S. market -- the company opened an office in Menlo Park, Calif., earlier this year with plans to sell cars stateside in 2009 -- the Think City will be a rarity: A full-speed electric car meeting U.S. and European crash standards.

"The car was 95% complete when Ford stopped development in 2002," says Fretheim. In the long run, he says, the down time might have been a good thing. "When we started work again we had better options for batteries."


With competitors like Ford, maybe GM can survive.

Can't wait to drive one.