We just got some more details on the Think's upcoming electric car plant in Elkhart, Indiana that was announced yesterday. The company expects to bring over 400 jobs to Elkhart, but not right away, and to make 20,000 Think City electric car there per year once full production is reached in maybe 2013. The lead times are long, but that's what needs to happen, Think chief executive officer Richard Canny told AutoblogGreen today.
Canny said that what's happening with his company is "just kind of gearing up" in the U.S. right now. There is a team working in Dearborn, Michigan, and the Indiana facility doesn't need workers just yet (sorry). The company's tentative schedule is as follows:
- Going on now: establishing the supply base in the U.S. by talking to parts suppliers
- Second quarter of 2010: start taking applicants for the Elkhart facility
- Third and fourth quarter of 2010: begin training Elkhart workers, begin importing "slightly enhanced" vehicles from Europe
- First quarter of 2011: the first Elkhart cars come online
- 2013: hope to be using all of the plant's 20,000-unit capacity.
Considering Think's long-standing partnership with Ener1, it's no surprise that the batteries for the cars made in Elkhart will be made in Indiana. The cell will be made by Ener1 in Indianapolis, and the the pack will be made by Ener1's subsidy EnerDel just outside of Indianapolis and shipped to Elkhart. As time goes on, more and more of the parts used in the cars will be sourced from the U.S., including the sheetmetal, the seats and the interior trim, but Canny said that would probably not be in place by Job 1.
About that first Elkhart car: the vehicles made in Indiana will be slightly more powerful than the Think City vehicles sold in Europe. Even the vehicles that will be imported from Finland at the end of this year will be "slightly enhanced," Canny said. This means, at the very least, that they will have a higher top speed. The Euro-spec models have a top speed of 62 mph, but Canny knows that's not fast enough for Americans. "We realize that today's car is very much a European car," he said. "Of course we wouldn't sell a car with a top speed of 62 in the U.S." Think does have prototypes with a 70-75 mph top speed running in Norway right now, but exactly how fast the U.S. Thinks will be able to go will be decided later after the engineers calibrate the top speed with battery use considerations.
Looking a little further down the line, Canny said that future vehicles will likely be built on the City car platform, so don't expect the Think Ox any time soon. Canny said an electric car should be small, seat four and the "sweet spot" is a 100-mile range. Bigger and heavier cars might need range extenders, which ads weight, he said, and is just not reasonable yet.
Speaking about reasonable, Canny said that there are two big electric vehicle myths out there: "range anxiety and this silly argument that the infrastructure has to come first." As soon as there are EVs on the road – and the first cars will be business cars that return to base or will be owned by early adopters who know to charge overnight – businesses (shopping centers, movie theaters, etc.) will do everything they can to try and attract these vehicles. There will be a market pull, he said, and EV owners will have a reason to go to these places because, Canny believes, "15-minute fast charging will become the norm in the next 2-3 years." He said there are examples of this sort of quick-charging around today and, provided that battery cooling is well managed, 15 minutes "will become pretty routine."
Fuente: AutoblogGreen
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