Think City

Think City is small, fun and electric. And it’s in production now!

The Think City is a small, two seater electric car produced in Finland by Think Global based in Oslo, Norway. The car is a three door hatchback with plastic, unpainted bodywork which reduces energy consumption and toxins and makes the panels easier to recycle. The City was the first highway-capable electric vehicle certified to European safety standards.

According to the Think website, the City accelerates from 0 to 50 mph in 16 seconds and goes on to a top speed of 62 mph. It has a range of 100 miles. It has typical charge times from a standard electric socket of 13 hours for a full charge, and 9.5 hours for an 80% charge.

The Think City is currently available in Scandinavia, Austria, The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, where Think recently concluded a deal with Migros, the country’s largest retailer and biggest private employer. Think is planning to enter the French and Belgian markets with the UK and Japan later. It will go on sale in America in late 2010.

A long history of electric cars with a fresh injection of funds

Think has been producing electric cars since the early 1990s. Between 1999 and 2003 it was owned by Ford Motor Company and has subsequently changed ownership and struggled for cash. The company emerged from bankruptcy protection in 2009. The largest shareholder currently is lithium-ion battery maker Ener1 which has a 31% stake, followed by venture capital fund Rockport Capital Partners, an investment fund specialising in energy and green technology.

In early 2010, the shareholders raised $40 million to support Think’s expansion plans. Ener1 and Rockport Capital each increased its investment by $12.5 million. The cash injection will fund the launch of an initial stock of 500 Think Citys in the US in late 2010 and a production plant in Elkhart, Indiana.

Think’s expansion is led by CEO Richard Canny, appointed in October 2008 from Ford Motor Company, with 25 years of global automotive experience. Charles Gassenheimer has been Chairman of Think’s Board of Directors since May 2010. He is also Chairman and CEO of Ener1, the parent company of EnerDel, manufacturers of Think’s cutting edge batteries. Canny and Gassenheimer are ‘transforming Think into a company ideally placed to translate product advantage into market success’.

According to Canny, the additional funding will now pull ahead right-hand-drive products for markets such as Japan and the UK. ‘Think has a proven electric vehicle in mass production today, and the benefit of 30 million miles of real-world EV experience over our 20-year history,’ he said.

Latest generation lithium-ion batteries

After a number of years of collaboration between Think and American battery maker Ener1, from June 2010 the City is being fitted with Ener1's EnerDel lithium-ion battery system, the first pure electric vehicle to use this new generation technology. Thanks to their prismatic design, EnerDel batteries are lighter, smaller and have higher energy density than other lithium-ion batteries.

Richard Canny said: ‘Think’s adoption of Ener1’s battery technology is going to allow us to scale up much more quickly in Europe and also be ready to enter the US market later this year. The volume production of these batteries now underway at Ener1 opens the door for Think to finally enter higher scale production, now that battery supply constraints are behind us.

‘Not only does Lithium-ion offer all sorts of advantages at the customer level, it also opens up the potentially massive business-to-business market for us as well, which will result in significant volume expansion and international growth for Think.’ It means that the EnerDel Think partnership is well placed to pursue global business-to-business opportunities such as the drivetrain tests already underway with the Japan Postal Service, and with Mazda as part of an Itochu Corporation-led sustainability project in Tsukuba, Japan.

The EnerDel battery can be charged up to 80 percent of its capacity in just 15 minutes. Think has teamed up with AeroVironment, a leading developer and supplier of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, to demonstrate the company’s level III fast-charge system in a Think City. The team held a news conference at the 2010 Washington Auto Show where they charged a Think City from 0-80% using AV’s fast-charge system in 15 minutes.

The Think City is currently produced at Valmet Automotive’s high-technology manufacturing base in Uusikaupunki, Finland. Valmet Automotive is a leading provider of engineering and manufacturing services to the automotive industry and recently became a Think shareholder and strategic industrial partner. Valmet also assembles Garia and Fisker alternative-fuel vehicles as well as Porsche AG’s Boxster and Cayman.

The American venture

Think’s plan is to begin selling the Think City in target U.S. cities in the fourth quarter of 2010. Think has established a subsidiary company, Think North America, which announced in January 2010 that it would build a new manufacturing facility in Elkhart, Indiana and begin assembling electric vehicles from the first quarter of 2011. Think’s investment in Elkhart, according to one report a total of $43.5 million, will support manufacturing capacity for more than 20,000 vehicles a year which Think hopes to achieve by 2013. The choice of Indiana is due to the proximity to Ener1’s plant in Indianapolis and the incentive package offered by the government.

Think North America has completed the initial phase of due diligence for a low-cost, long-term loan with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to help fund the North American investment. The company’s application is under the $25-billion Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program designed to spur development of more fuel efficient vehicles, including pure electric and hybrid electric vehicles.

The company will also benefit from the Electric Vehicle Deployment Act of 2010 if it is passed by the House and the Senate. The Act would extend incentives to consumers to buy electric vehicles, provide grants to selected communities to demonstrate widespread deployment of electric vehicles, and provide for additional measures that would support the research, development, deployment, and manufacturing of electric vehicles, charging infrastructure and related technologies.

Is Think ready for America?

CEO Canny, however, has a problem which may prove difficult to overcome. As it stands, the performance of the City is not matched to the demands of the American driver. It has slow acceleration (0-50 mph takes 16 seconds) and a very low top speed – 62 mph. Canny has said that he couldn’t sell a car in America with that kind of performance. The models destined for America will therefore be juiced up, but by how much depends on Think engineers’ calibration of the top speed in respect of the powertrain and the usage conditions of the EnerDell battery.

Richard Canny has a further problem that might prove even more intransigent. In March 2010, Forbes magazine sent writer Jim Motavalli to Valmet Automotive’s plant in Finland. His report was disconcerting:

The process on the Think City assembly line fits the Finnish temperament; it is slow, exacting and completely non-mechanized. The only robot in sight was installing windshields in the Boxsters and Caymans. The lab-coated workers put the cars together with hand tools then tested every component.

In order to ship cars to America from the fourth quarter of 2010 and supply sufficient quantities to meet US demand ahead of the Elkhart plant’s Job 1in 2011, as well as meet European demand in existing markets, plus offer the car for sale in the right hand drive markets of the UK and Japan as Canny has said he wants to do, it requires a modern, high-volume, high-efficiency, highly mechanised manufacturing process to reduce unit costs to a level that makes the finished product profitable.

The competition

And so to the crucial product/price equation. Canny is reported to have said the car is likely to be sold at under $30,000, and that volume may eventually bring prices down to the "low $20,000" range. Although the price is higher than many conventional cars, so Canny argues, that is offset by the fact that it is virtually maintenance-free and has operating costs of about two cents per mile.

Minimal operating costs is a virtue shared by all electric cars, so how does the City’s purchase price compare with other electric cars?

The City will face two formidable new contenders when it launches in late 2010 in America.The key competitor will be the pure electric Nissan Leaf  which will launch in five states, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington and Tennessee, in December 2010. A nationwide rollout will occur during 2011, with additional markets added each month.

Nissan claims that the Leaf is the world’s first affordable medium-sized electric car, designed specifically around a lithium-ion battery-powered chassis, and capable of carrying five adults in comfort. The Leaf, Nissan stresses, is a ‘real car’, an everyday vehicle rather than an urban runabout. It is very highly specified with all the exterior, interior and IT features that would be expected from a modern car. It will be priced at $32,780, reducing to $25,280 after the deduction of US tax credit of $7500.

The second competitor is the Chevrolet Volt which will launch in November 2010. It’s a series petrol/electric plug-in hybrid, slightly smaller than a midsize car, designed to carry four people, with ‘a funky interior that resembles an IPod on wheels’, according to one reviewer. It will accelerate from 0-60 mph in 9 seconds and on to a top speed of 100 mph. The Volt has a range on electricity alone of 40 miles and a battery-plus-petrol-engine range of 300 miles. GM haven’t revealed the price but estimates are putting it at near $40,000 or $32,500 after the federal tax rebate.

Comparisons are inevitable

These two cars, among others, will be compared with the Think City, a two seater (rear seats are an optional extra), urban runabout with plastic, unpainted body panels. The US version will travel ‘at highway speeds’ but acceleration will remain slow compared with rivals. Its price will probably be below the Leaf and Volt but are Americans going to take to it? When they can buy a Leaf for a couple of thousand dollars or so more, it raises a very big question mark.

Think CEO Richard Canny has been reported as saying he will roll out an all-new Think City in 2012. Think may just need to up their game to play in the big league.