PASADENA, Calif. — Norwegian electric carmaker Think Global is bringing its zippy urban runabout to the United States.
On Monday at Fortune’s Brainstorm Green conference, Think launched its North American operation with Silicon Valley venture capitalist heavyweight Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Boston’s Rockport Capital Partners as lead investors.
Think North America will sell the Think City, its two-seater battery-powered car, as well as a forthcoming five-seater called the Think Ox.
“We thought this would be a wonderful vehicle to bring to the U.S.,” said Kleiner partner Ray Lane. He’ll serve as chairman of Think North America, which will be a 50-50 joint venture between Think and Kleiner/Rockport. They declined to put a price tag on the investment but Lane said “we’ll invest what it takes.”
The Think City began rolling off the production line in Norway earlier this year and Think already has announced it will sell the car in France, the U.K. and Scandinavia. With its current battery, the City can go about 110 miles on a charge at a top speed of around 62 miles an hour. Lane said Think North America aims to sell the car in the U.S. market for less than a Toyota (TM) Prius, which retails for around $25,000. Batteries being developed by Think’s partners A123Systems in collaboration with General Electric (GE) will boost the range and top speed, Willums has noted.
“This is not just a one-off kind of deal,” says Rockport’s Wilber James, who is serving as Think North America’s president while a CEO search is underway. “Being venture capitalists, we’re on the cutting edge in battery technology. We’re not just passive investors; we’re very active in this company.”
Think CEO Jan Olaf-Willums, who appeared on stage with Lane and James, said he hopes to sell a few thousand cars next year — starting in California — and then ramp up to 30,000 cars. “We can put assembly plants anywhere in six months,” said Willums, referring to Think’s $10 million modular factories.
James and Lane seemed taken with the little electric. “I had the privilege of sitting in back of the City while Ray Lane drove the car with Jan-Olaf through the streets of Geneva,” said James. “It’s a fun car to drive.”
Green Wombat can confirm that. I drove a Think City last year when I visited Willums in Norway for a story I wrote for Business 2.0 magazine. The stylish two-seater with the roof-to-bumper glass hatch accelerates like a sports cars, thanks to the instant transmission of power from the electric motor to the wheels.
Willums brought two Thinks – one a sporty orange convertible, the other a black coupe — to Pasadena. “That will be a big seller in Los Angeles,” Lane told Green Wombat as a crowd gathered around the cabriolet in the Southern California sunshine outside the Langham hotel in Pasadena.
Since I drove the City last, it’s been been upgraded with an interactive, Internet-enabled touchscreen. The City will sync with your home computer, download your schedule, your shopping list and monitor your battery usage and driving habits, according to Dipender Saluja, whose Silicon Valley startup, Automatik, is developed the the technology to create what Willums calls a “computer on wheels.” The onboard system is designed to communicate with a smart utility grid so that the owner can be charged or credited for the electricity consumed or returned back to the grid from the car’s battery.
On Monday, I got behind the wheel of the Think City that sported a large sunroof and took a quick spin around the hotel grounds with Willums. Version 2.0 of the car was a more refined iteration of the pre-production car I drove last year in Norway but still a blast to drive.
Lane and Willums said Think will begin by selling a few thousand cars to corporate fleets. He also said Think North America is in discussions with utilities like PG&E (PCG).
Green Wombat 
NOW lets fire up those coal plants to produce all the extra electricity consumption from eCars!
Amazing that there is no information on distance the car xcan go between charges.
What’s the price?
Great car!!!
What is the price target and range of these vehicles?
Story updated with pricing, range and top speed of the Think City.
“let’s fire up all the coal plants to power these new e-cars”
what common people do not understand is that:
1) 10% coal plants already use a 100% clean technology. We just need a law to make the other plants ILLEGAL.
2) when pollution is localized (plant) you can do MONITOR IT, CONTROL IT, CLEAN IT. When pollution is spread EVERYWHERE (highways), then lung cancer is everywhere…
To Mining Town, VA
If your not educated on the material, please don’t post. Do your research first, then post. The ICE is far less effecient than a coal fire power plan. We also don’t need to import coal from countries unfriendly to the United States and it’s allies. So yes, if it means less oil, lets fire up the coal plants.
OK an obvious (or not so obvious) question – is there any plans to include a solar panel somewhere on the vehicle (roof, hood, back, flip-up…) to allow the unit to do some charging while sitting in the parking lot all day while I am at work?
Ah yes spoken like a person from a Mining Town back East.
I would recharge these cars with the Solar panels I have, thank you very much.
It sounds great to have a car that is moved on electricity hopefully it’s enviromental footprint as well as the cost of the electricity needed for a recharge is lower than the cars in the strets.
Cheap or expensive, the bigger problem is where are the cars going to recharge . . . infrastructure will make or break investments like these and not even Kleiner Perkins can control outcomes on a scale that large . . . this is the only car i know about that can by and large avoid the need for an occasional gas station <a href=”http://cleantechlawandbusiness.com/cleanbeta/index.php/131/extreme-gas-mileage-worlds-most-fuel-efficient-car/”
The electric revolution has begun! First the Tesla, now Think Global. I can’t wait to see more companies get into production and chase away foreign oil forever.
Why does it always seem that new electric vehicle start ups always try to make a new rolling chassis, rather than leveraging on an existing design that’s been crash tested and has spare parts like brakes/power windows/climate control readily available?
I imagine cost would be cheaper too.
Todd, what’s the time it takes to charge the Think City with its standard battery?
Nice point, Steve. My point is we have to get past the “solar panel” mentality, though, that’s such a fixation.
If you can do BIPV and maybe BITV (Building-Integrated PhotoVoltaics, ThermoVoltaics), then why not Vehicle-Integrated.
If you WANT to see it on there, fine. If not, make it blend. I am sure there is a ceramics-based photovoltaic/thermovoltaic body panel that is waiting to happen that is the safety and strength equal of any of today’s structural elements that addresses your concerns and beyond.
Someone just needs to get busy and DO IT. Let’s not forget the thermovoltaic possibilities, either, whether your vehicle throws off heat from internal combustion or not, as you have invoked the classic image of the “parking lot bake-out”, any vehicle presents opportunites for heat-to-electricity.
And think about all the airspace inside the body panels. Can we get busy and develop something like mass-produced ultracapacitors to hold some of the juice?
You could plug it into the house at the end of the day for at least 2 different reasons, and one is grid-positive.
You dumb people. Let’s fire up the coal plants. What’s wrong w/ you. Have you guys heard solar energy. It is in abundant supply use it. No need for extra coal based plants. Didn’t we cause enough damage already? You can have solar panel on parking structure available as of today. Have your employer installed it in parking space and you can charge your car while working w/o any fossile fuels.
How about , lets go back to 1910 and ride a horse and walk 🙂 No gas no electricity 🙂
Cool car, I just think that Bush is going to be to pissed to allow this kind of car in his country weather his people like it or not, whatever he says he is the man of the country.
Thanks for the update with price, range, and top speed. Vehicles like this could serve perfectly well as commuting vehicles for a lot of drivers. They just need to be out there and available, with reliable support and service, and have a convenient method of recharging overnight.
Thanks Dave,
I did think about the multiple technologies capable of generating electricity for recharging (my job is researching patents and writing patent opinions and I have seen many related to these technologies – it is a cool way to spend the day, though I’d rather have the ability to develop some of these ideas). Anyway, there should be little barrier to developing an electric car that never needs to attach to the grid. Battery technology is most critical to the success of these vehicles.
Yes “Go solar” I would hope the panels I currently have would be enough, but the ability to integrate the recharge technology into the structure of the car would be the most efficient way to go. Think of the amount of time our cars sit out in the sun (longer than I spend on the road by a long shot). Plus integrated technologies could operate while on the road (the ultimate would be an electric car that has an effectively unlimited range since it is always charging).
Why are these vehicles do not leverage existing platforms is typically based on design issues related to the batteries, the lack of the need for certain systems (fuel, emissions control/exhaust) and manufacturing (Think’s modular factory design would likely not be campatible with an exisiting platform)
Keep dreaming. When I see comments like “we’ll invest what it takes” I wonder who is providing the investment capital. Must be an unlimited resource. Hope so, since this is what it will take. Also, comments like “Being venture capitalists, we’re on the cutting edge in battery technology”. Being a venture capitalist does not mean you are on the cutting edge of anything except gambling with money.
investors will always be investors, money is money. We just have to support this kind of idea. Who else would care? It definitely revolutionize the core of our transportation. a year or so there will be guidelines to this and better performance and accessibility from the product. A huge investment to make it successful but in a decades time, I definitely bet it will pay-off and all of us will benefit from it. Let’s support this for our future and children
Let me steal another’s phrase and say “Can’t we all just get along?”
Let’s, for a moment, put aside the argument for solar power.
A key benefit of electrically-charged cars lies in the fact that electricity is produced more efficiently in large volumes, i.e. in a power plant, than at the consumer level. While electric cars increase demand for centrally-produced electricity, the extent to which they replace gasoline powered cars will result in a net decrease of atmospheric emissions.
Better solar power technologies are almost certain to result from increased demand for electricity!
There are two problems with electric-only cars, and that is their operation in temperature extremes, that is, temperatures that are extreme for humans, not the cars. When the summertime temperatures soar past the 90s, and the wintertime temperatures plunge below freezing, it is really hard to operate an automobile without air conditioning and heating, at least for those of us who are advancing in age. I drove a VW Beetle for years, with no air conditioning, just the windows down, and the vent window propped open. Now in my 50s I find I have greater loss of hearing in my left ear due to the wind and traffic noise I subjected it to. I managed for years to avoid rush-hour traffic, so I was not sitting in exhaust-pollution coming into my auto most of the time either.
Anyway, both AC and heat require power and that has to come from the battery, which further reduces the time-between-recharges and how far you can drive-between-recharges. Problem is, these know-it-all car designers aren’t sitting in the summer heat roasting in a not-moving-in-traffic car to fully appreciate the need for AC. As for heat in the winter, well, bundle up and hope you don’t need to defrost your windshield.
My problem with these cars is the potential problems in traffic jams. I’ve been stuck in Chicago for hours, what happens when the batteries run out?