Saturday, January 27, 2007

Tesla Powered Th!nks?

Michael Kanellos over at CNetNews.com reports from the recent Clean-Tech Investor Summit that Tesla Motors will be selling its battery packs to other electric car companies. First in line appears to be Th!nk Global of Norway with its ready-for-manufacture Th!nk City.

Martin Eberhard, CEO of Tesla Motors, said that Tesla has formed a group called Tesla Energy Now to sell battery packs to other companies.

"A certain unnamed Scandinavian electric car company has become a customer," he said.

Sitting two seats down on the panel was Jan-Olaf Willums, president of Th!nk Global...

I drove a 2001 Ford Th!nk City for three years in San Francisco. It is the car that brought me forth out of the oil age, and made me realize it was not technology, batteries, or consumer acceptance that was keeping electric cars out of the showroom. As you can see in the film Who Killed the Electric Car?, I was not a happy camper when Ford took away my car.

The redesigned 2003 Th!nk City was stopped on the assembly line when Ford killed its electric program. Since being taken over by a Norwegian investment group last year, Jan-Olaf Willums, president of Th!nk Global, has been searching for a viable, affordable battery to power the new Th!nk City. A Tesla-powered Th!nk City would be a welcome entry into the growing London market for congestion charge avoiding electric cars, and capture attention in California and New York, where hundreds once roamed (gas) free.