Recently, I made a small diversion from my walk to the office in San Francisco and took a ride in a Wheego. The Wheego was being showcased at Justin Herman Plaza right across from the Ferry Building not far from my office in the heart of the city’s Financial District. The Wheego is a brand new all-electric car from an interesting manufacturer in Georgia. Locally, the Wheego is sold at Ellis Brooks Auto Center. This intrigued me. Ellis Brooks is a venerable car name in San Francisco, having been around for 40+ years. I still remember their radio jingle from my childhood, “See Ellis Brooks today for your Chevrolet, corner of Bush and Van Ness . . .” The Ellis Brooks dealership now sells pre-owned cars and is no longer associated with GM. It has just begun selling the Wheego. Before I took my test drive, I had a chance to talk to Ellis Brooks’ grandson, John Brooks, about why they decided to sign up with Wheego. He seemed comfortable with the manufacturer in large part because the car was assembled from components made by manufacturers already in volume production of vehicles.

So how was the ride? Pretty good. It was quite roomy with a nice, quiet ride and a firm feel of the road. Allowing for the fact that it is a small two-seater coupe, it had the feel of real a car – not a golf cart or an experiment.

Now I should back up for a minute and explain that I have long been a skeptic that there will be significant adoption of all-electric vehicles any time soon. But this car changed my mind a bit.

My skepticism about this has been based on looking at the passenger car market and thinking about what it takes to succeed in that market. Then I compared the passenger car market to other potential electric vehicle markets.

Passenger cars have been the province of integrated high volume manufacturing, low margins, very high quality expectations (especially fit, finish and amenities), and very high service and support expectations. In short, the barriers to entry for this market seem quite daunting, especially when compared to the delivery truck market or the ATV market. These markets have significantly lower volumes, less integrated manufacturing (many manufacturers are essentially final assemblers), much lower quality expectations on fit, finish and amenities, and lower service and support expectations.

There are some low-volume passenger car manufacturers, but all make vehicles aimed at high priced specially markets, not low to mid priced daily drivers.

There is another big difference between the passenger car market and the delivery truck market – what delivery truck buyers want fits really well with what electric vehicles do best:

• predictable low to medium mileage daily duty cycle
• low noise
• excellent torque
• low total cost of ownership

With an electric delivery truck, you don’t need to worry that you’ll ever need to drive from San Francisco to L.A. to visit your sick aunt. In fact, for commercial trucks, limited range can be a plus – there’s no way for trucks to wander very far. With passenger cars, limited range is a big reason not to buy.

Given this, I have felt for some time that we wouldn’t see significant adoption of all-electric vehicles until we started seeing real traction in markets like delivery trucks. I expected passenger cars (and delivery trucks too to some degree) would likely first go hybrid, then shift the hybrid balance to more electric (e.g. using fuel to run a generator to extend the electric range), and then later shift to all electric. These successive market advances would be linked to gaining manufacturing scale, cost down of batteries and other components critical to all-electric vehicles (though batteries is the big one).

My Wheego ride today and my chat with the dealer changed my view. Here was an all-electric car, at a regular car dealer, with a high but regular car price, from a car manufacturer that nearly appeared out of thin air. You see Wheego as a manufacturer is just a final assembler. From my initial quick look, Wheego came on the scene as a passenger car player in 2007 or so, backed by the former founder of MindSpring. Before then, it was exclusively an electric golf cart manufacturer. So it’s really been an eye blink in automotive time scale (2007 to 2010) to see cars turning up at dealerships. Granted, the model at dealers today and the one that I test drove is just a medium speed vehicle (MSV) with a top speed of 35 MPH and not for highway usage (more on that later). But this was still impressive to me.

Wheego gets the car bodies from a big manufacturer in China (a body that is currently used for gas drive cars in other international markets). It gets its motors from a Wisconsin electric motor manufacturer and its motor controller from Curtis Instruments who makes controllers for forklifts. Maybe the truck style manufacturing could work for passenger cars after all.

In addition, I began to think about the current passenger car market for all-electrics. There probably is a significant market for all-electric vehicles, even in the current economy, and even if they aren’t strictly ‘economic’ on a dollar per mile basis compared to gas or hybrid cars. Think about how much the early EV1 cost in its day[1], and how people still rave about it years and years later. In my revised view, I think there will be a small but significant true believer market in the U.S. for all-electric cars. Yes, the big boys are coming – Nissan with the Leaf, Chevy with the Volt, Ford with the Focus EV, but not for a year, maybe two, maybe more. In the mean time, the true believer market will be served by the likes of Wheego, Think, Smart, and others. Even after Nissan, Chevy, Ford and other big car companies arrive in the market, the early entrants may have continued success. Plus they may have customers and EV infrastructure that car manufacturers with non-existent, dormant, or failing EV programs may look to acquire. There is no substitute for firsthand customer knowledge.

The Wheego I drove was a medium speed vehicle (MSV) with a max speed 35 MPH and a real world range of 40 miles. The highway speed version is on the way – due to arrive this summer. It is currently undergoing NTHSA cash testing. It will have a top speed of 65 MPH and a range of 100 miles. The high speed vehicle (HSV) Wheego will not be a lot different than the MSV. Differences include: lithium ion batteries, airbags, and some additional structure supports to the body.

I now see the all-electric car market developing from two converging paths – the true believer all-electric passenger car market and the more economically driven all-electric truck and fleet vehicle markets. The true believer market will drive visibility and customer expectations, and provide valuable real world feedback about what electric car consumers care about and will pay for. While the truck and fleet markets will help dive down cost, I expect both will speed the adoption all-electric cars to a significant portion of the passenger car market.

So for you true believers out there, price before incentives for the MSV Wheego is ~$19K (and it’s eligible for a 10% Federal tax credit) putting the MSV price around $17K before any state or local incentives. Prices for the HSV have not yet been announced, but the target price is in the $30K range (and it will be eligible for a $7500 federal tax credit) putting the net cost of the HSV before state and local incentives in the roughly in the mid $20K range.

by Jim Motavalli for The Daily Green, March 5, 2010

ATLANTA–We’ve reached the make-or-break point for electric vehicles. As many as a half dozen different models will be on the road by the end of the year, and when it comes right down to it we have no idea if people will line up to buy them.

There are several big hurdles, including price (EVs will be significantly more expensive than we’re used to — small two-seat cars will start around $25,000), unfamiliarity (people will be plugging in at night, instead of going to the gas station) and range anxiety (most of these cars will go only 100 miles between charges).

Last week, I talked to Mary Ann Wright, managing director of the business accelerator at major battery maker Johnson Controls (they’re supplying lithium-ion packs to both the BMW and Mercedes-Benz hybrids), and heard about the “EV gap.” She said the industry worldwide has the capacity to produce four million cars, but the actual demand might be only two million.

Wright was among several witnesses at a Senate hearing last week asking the feds, specifically the Department of Energy, for help closing that gap — with one popular concept being the mass purchase of EVs for government fleets, which could include more than a million vehicles. It makes a lot of sense, particularly because fleet cars come back to central depots that make recharging a cinch.

Wright also told me that EV costs will come down with desperately needed volume. “Scale won’t get us all the way, but it is going to be a significant driver,” she said.

I thought about all this in Atlanta, where I had the opportunity to be the first journalist to drive the Wheego Whip Life, an unusual name for a tiny, Smart-like two-seat battery EV with a 90-mile range and the need for an overnight charge. The Life, built by a small company (really small, I’m talking five employees) whose previous entries were neighborhood vehicles incapable of highway travel, could be on the road as early as June. That would make it probably the second EV on the road after the Tesla Roadster — and, at $32,000 (before a federal $7,500 income tax rebate), the first EV intended for a mass audience. The Wheego was great fun to drive, reasonably fast, offered exceptional handling and a tight turning circle, and was unearthly quiet. Here’s a closeup look on video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZliW06ya2M&feature=player_embedded

Mike McQuary is a brash serial entrepreneur who built the Mindspring ISP into a major force (before merging it with EarthLink), and now heads Wheego (as well as a record company, Brash Music). He says he’ll be happy with sales of only about 2,000 in the first year. EVs are an unknown in the marketplace he says. With luck, his car will survive crash testing and he’ll have 50 dealers in place by the summer. But will people plunk down what is effectively $26,000 (after the rebate) when, say, a Toyota Yaris offers familiarity and four seats for $13,000?

The cost of operating an EV is considerably less than a gas car, a few cents a mile compared to 25 to 40 cents. And we shouldn’t “mis-under-estimate” (I just heard Simon Cowell say that) people’s willingness to do the right thing when it comes to the environment, because EVs are as green as they come. Even when the electricity comes from coal plants, they’re far kinder to the planet than even a fuel-efficient gas car.

Cars like the Wheego are cute, too, and people like being early adopters of earth-friendly technology. Perhaps it will surprise everyone and become a green fad car. The Smart was definitely that, but unfortunately it didn’t last. The Mini (being tested in EV guise as the Mini-E) is showing more staying power.

“The more I researched electric vehicles, the more I was convinced that they would have a comeback and become a lasting part of the transportation industry,” said McQuary. “When you look at where we were 15 years ago with cars like the EV-1, it’s plain the technology has improved. We have battery breakthroughs, better onboard chargers, smarter hardware overall. At the same time, we’ve had a huge movement toward environmental consciousness, driven by Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. People are more aware of the global consequences of climate change, and are willing to do something about it.”

Luckily, doing something about it might just include buying a Wheego Whip Life, a Chevrolet Volt, a Coda sedan, a Fisker Karma or a Nissan Leaf. Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan, is in Geneva tonight, and he’s optimistic. “The numbers are big,” he said. “I think there’s going to be a need for new capacity… We may have to rush to build capacity for cars and batteries.” Of course, he also said his Nissan Leaf was going to be “the only one on the market” in 2011, and he might have some argument there.

Can an electric vehicle startup with just five employees find success in the cash-intensive, cutthroat automotive world? Maybe, if the five people have deep business experience, a savvy marketing sense and a compelling product.

And that just might be the case with Atlanta-based Wheego, which will get a highway-capable electric car on the road as early as June, ahead of Fisker, Coda, Think, GM and Nissan. If the two-seat lithium-ion battery car passes crash tests, it will be on sale for approximately $32,000 at (the company hopes) 50 dealerships across the country.

I was the first journalist to drive the car, known as the Wheego Whip Life, on the snowy streets of Atlanta. I enjoyed the quiet, squeak-free operation, the ultra-tight turning radius, and the nicely appointed (but not luxurious) interior. Like most EVs, the car features very quick acceleration, but this one also exhibited good regenerative braking response and generally good ergonomics. I experienced some wheelspin, a factor both of the wet roads and the light front end;  the company plans to address this by  moving the heavy battery pack forward.

The Life is a variation on a Chinese-made gasoline car (with a strong styling parallel to the Smart fortwo) called the Noble, which has not been a big success. For that reason, when Wheego CEO Mike McQuary came calling at the Shuanghuan factory two hours outside of Beijing, the management was ready  to make a deal to convert the Noble to battery power.

The cars are assembled in Ontario, California at Hi Performance, and the 28-kilowatt-hour lithium battery packs are made by Flux Power in Escondido, California. The electric motors (60 peak horsepower) are supplied by Leeson, a division of Regal Beloit in Wisconsin.

The Life will has a range of 80 to 90 miles , and a top speed of about 67. It’s a logical extension of the low-speed vehicle (LSV) version of the Whip, which looks much the same but is speed-governed to 35 mph and is not allowed on interstates. Despite these restrictions, Wheego has managed to sell almost 300 LSV Whips—many in the state of Oklahoma, where a combination of generous state and federal tax credits meant that, until January 1, consumers could buy them for an astonishing $2,500.

“Our ambition has never been to be the biggest and sell the most,” McQuary said. “We’re trying to create an affordable, best-in-class electric car, form a community and have a dialogue with our drivers [who already get regular newsletters].” He said the company would be satisfied if it sells 2,000 Wheego Whip Lifes in the first year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtSfqnEUs5M&feature=player_embedded

McQuary is anything but an auto industry lifer.  He has an interesting back story. He joined Mindspring in 1995 and stuck with it through a merger with EarthLink in 1999. The combined entity became the second-largest national ISP behind AOL, with McQuary as president. As he tells it, he left EarthLink after failing to convince the company to start an online music store to service what became Apple’s iPod. McQuary founded Brash Music, an independent label, in 2002.

McQuary brought two of his Mindspring/EarthLink colleagues over to Wheego, a spinoff of Ruff & Tuff Electric Vehicles (which makes plug-in ATVs in the $7,000 to $13,000 range). McQuary also brought in Jeff Boyd as president. Boyd is an experienced auto executive; he is a veteran of Roger Penske’s company and Miles Electric Vehicles, which is launching the Coda battery sedan later this year.

“We are running a very lean operation that allows us to put most of our money into R&D and technology instead of overhead,” Boyd said. “An advantage of our size is that we can be extremely nimble, but the car will have to stand or fall on its own.”

According to Boyd, Wheego will follow the Life with a small four-door crossover SUV in 2011, a utility truck for commercial use and fleets in 2012, and a sports roadster in 2013. The goal, he said, is to keep the price below $30,000 (before tax incentives) for all the models.

Photos: Jim Motavalli

Jim Motavalli is the author of Forward Drive: The Race to Build Clean Cars for the Future, among other books. He has been covering the environmental side of the auto industry for more than a decade, and writes regularly on those topics for the New York Times.

Wheego is a very lean operation, with just five employees. Their new highway-capable electric car can get 90 miles on a charge, will be available this summer, and will sell for $32,000 — but there’s a $7,500 federal tax credit.

Virginia’s Evatran is talking up a trial in Wytheville, Va. of its Plugless Power brand “hands-free” proximity charging system for battery electric vehicles plug-in hybrids. “We recognize that convenient charging of electric vehicles is essential to their volume acceptance,” Evatran cofounder and sales and marketing director Rebecca Hough says in a release. The inductive hardware, which can be fitted to  existing EVs, allows contact-less charging for an EV charging regime “that is convenient, universal and reliable.” The EVs keep their cords for conventional charging when needed.

The trial is to include at least five EVs, including three Wheego Whips, one operated by the Trinkle Mansion, a Wytheville bed-and-breakfast. The Plugless Power charging system will be ready for full-scale production by late fall of this year, Evatran says.

Evatran is a unit of Wytheville-based MTC Transformers.

Evatran, co-founder Rebecca Hough, 276-620-3196; rhough@evatran.com; www.pluglesspower.com

Wheego, Les Seagraves, 678-904-4795; les@wheego.net; wheego.net

Trinkle Mansion, Patti Pizinger, 276-625-0625; trinklemansion@aol.com; www.trinklemansion.com

You’ve heard that electric cars are coming, starting this year. You’re even tempted to try one, but plugging your car in like a toaster sounds like a hassle. Well, what if that step were taken out of the equation?

A Virginia-based company, Evatran, is in field trials with a product called Plugless Power that will enable hands-free EV charging. Evantran plans to have it on the market in the fourth quarter of 2010, which is the same time many electric cars—including the Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf, Fisker Karma and Think City—go on sale. The concept for the device is fairly simple, and based on the 100-year-old principle of inductive power transfer that is at the heart of the $25 million utility transformer business for MTC Transformers, Evatran’s parent company.

“Simply put, electrical current flowing into a primary source causes current to flow into a secondary source,” Evatran says.

According to Rebecca Hough, director of sales and marketing at Evatran, “We see a lot of problems and inconvenience with plug-based systems. So our system depends simply on proximity between the charger and the car.”

Each EV would be equipped with a vehicle adapter made for that model. The driver then pulls into an equipped parking space, and aligns the lip of the car over the concrete barrier at the end of the space. The adapter at the bottom of the car will be just a quarter to half an inch from the barrier, allowing the power transfer. When the adapter is over the charger, a light goes on in the Plugless Power tower sitting next to the barrier, and the car automatically begins charging. “It’s easy,” said Hough. “Our main tenet is convenience. In our field trials, a 65-year-old woman did it on the first try.”

An obvious challenge for any such system is the different ride heights of cars and trucks. To get over that hurdle, Evatran is working with a Colorado company, Synchroness, which is charged with getting Plugless Power ready for the market. Synchroness researched the heights of upcoming models and concluded that the system should be able to accommodate 90 to 99 percent of EVs likely to be on the road next year. Monster trucks aren’t likely to be eligible, but Big Foot and its ilk are not likely to ditch fossil fuels anytime soon.

For field trials, Evatran is working with the Town of Wytheville, Virginia, where the company is based, as well as with local businesses there including Smokey’s BBQ and Counts Pharmacy that will install the system in parking spaces. Next month, Evatran will take delivery of three Wheego Whips (small neighborhood EVs made in Atlanta), a Current from Electric City Motors and a Zenn.

Probably the biggest barrier to widespread Plugless Power adoption is the plug-equipped competition from such major charging players as Better Place, Coulomb and AeroVironment. In a long process involving the Society of Automotive Engineers, the five-pin SAE J1772 charging plug was standardized—eliminating what would otherwise be a confusing morass of non-standard hardware.

On the other hand, Plugless Power’s system could be standardized from the outset, and quickly adopted by EV manufacturers.

But some EV advocates have caveats. According to Paul Scott, vice president of advocacy group Plug In America, “I think it’s kind of  silly, to tell the truth. Not that it doesn’t have applications, but if they think people will like EVs more because you can drive over a  spot in your driveway and charge, saving you the arduous task of having to (gasp!) plug in your car, then they don’t understand the nature of the American people I grew up with. Most of my friends are perfectly willing to spend the three seconds it takes to physically plug in the car.”

Scott also claimed there is a minor loss of power in inductive charging. “This is not inconsequential to those of us into hypermiling [getting the most range possible],” he said. To be fair, however, Scott’s friends are probably really dedicated to EVs. The casual user could prefer just aligning his car in a parking spot, with no messy plugs to deal with.

Wytheville Businesses to Be the First in America to Offer “Hands-Free” EV Charging

According to Rebecca Hough, co-founder and director of sales and marketing for Evatran, “We recognize that convenient charging of electric vehicles is essential to their volume acceptance. We invite drivers to see for themselves how our proximity charging system can make EV ownership more convenient and enjoyable. We’re thrilled to be working with town officials, local leaders, and the owners of Trinkle Mansion, Counts Pharmacy and Smokey’s BBQ to make Wytheville the first locale in the country to offer Plugless Power™ to drivers of electric cars.” Hough adds, “MTC Transformers, our parent company, has been a leader in the Virginia business community for 20 years. We are continuing in this tradition by inviting other Virginia businesses to make our community a model for convenient EV charging.” Following the field trial, Evatran plans to extend its Field Trial program to other parts of the U.S.

The Plugless Power™ charging system will be ready for full-scale production by late Fall 2010. For details on the program and driver testimonials, visit www.evatran.com.

About Evatran

Evatran is the manufacturer of Plugless Power™, the world’s first “hands-free” charging system for electric vehicles. Utilizing a unique dual-component system based on inductive technology, Evatran’s Plugless Power™ will streamline the process of charging electric vehicles and extended-range hybrids by eliminating the nuisance of the cord and the plug. The result is an electric-vehicle charging system that is convenient, universal and reliable. Evatran’s customers are manufacturers, dealers and drivers of electric or extended-range hybrid vehicles. Other customers utilizing Plugless Power™ may include corporations, municipal governments, utilities, residential developers, new homebuilders, retailers and small businesses.

Ditch the gas and grab the extension cord, we’re charging up some sweet electrified rides, people. Back in the days of yore, electric cars were boring and nerdy. Then companies like Tesla Motors came along and made electric cars badass.

Just look at the electric cars we have now, compared to the ones we had ten years ago. These electrified rides are seriously looking good. But don’t take my word for it, check them out yourself.

See the full article at: 

http://www.trendhunter.com/slideshow/electrified-rides-tesla-motors

Western automakers have started designing cars specifically for the huge Chinese market, and we don’t mean just meeting tighter pollution and fuel-efficiency standards. The new cars and concepts have exterior contours that comport to Chinese ideas of balance, with interior colors and fabrics designed to signify status and evoke respect. The controls for entertainment and climate systems might even be moving to the back seat, because truly wealthy people don’t drive, they have drivers.

 Thirty years ago, the People’s Republic of China was an automotive backwater. Today it’s the biggest market in the world, having just eclipsed the United States. So, its consumers are demanding the best from automotive designers.

 The explosive growth of the Chinese market, where consumers bought 17 million new cars last year compared to about 10 million in the United States, has been a bright light in an otherwise dark time for the auto industry. As the traditional markets of North America, Europe and Japan stagnate or decline, automakers have seen their sales in China double and double again.

 “This is clearly the market of the future,” says Freidhelm Engler, General Motors director of design in China. “It’s not going to slow down.”

That has automakers taking a fresh look at how they design cars for the Chinese market. Although Western designs have proven immensely popular in China, global car companies were slow to account for Chinese tastes and preferences. More often than not, automakers made a few small tweaks to the cars they sold in the West and shipped them over. “Ten to 15 years ago, companies brought existing designs or even dated designs to the Chinese market,” says Chelsia Lau, chief designer at Ford Asia-Pacific. “Consumers in China are no longer satisfied to accept designs directly copied from overseas and are now far more discriminating and demanding.”

Volkswagen designed the Lavida specifically for China and introduced the car in 2008. Photo: Volkswagen.

First, a quick history lesson on how we got here. A little more than a generation ago, China’s GDP per capita was just over $100. As a command economy with a decrepit transportation network, it offered little incentive for Western automakers to sell there. Not that it mattered, because the governments of China and the United States didn’t want them to, anyway.

That started to change in the 1970s as the two countries normalized relations, and Deng Xiaoping (Mao Zedong’s successor) created economic zones where foreign manufacturers could build. Automakers rushed to establish joint ventures with Chinese companies and start selling cars.

As China’s economy grew, so did demand for cars. As money poured in, the increasingly wealthy population began to buy a lot of cars. China’s increasingly affluent middle class is larger than the entire U.S. population, and the Chinese market has been the fastest-growing for several years.

Last year, it surpassed the United States to become the largest automotive market in the world. It was a long-awaited marker that came unexpectedly soon after the economic recession brought U.S. car sales to a screeching halt. 

Now vehicle designers in China face unique challenges and opportunities. They are being given control over large organizations and an increasingly influential voice.Ford started building cars in China in 2003 and moved its Asia-Pacific offices from Bangkok to Shanghai last year. GM has increased its design staff in China from 80 in 2005 to 1,700.

Both are playing catch-up to Volkswagen, which was among the first companies to enter China and last year managed to sell more cars than any other automaker, Chinese or otherwise.

The challenges facing these designers is daunting. A vast cultural gulf separates China from the U.S. and Europe, requiring different design considerations and a new consumer portrait. Brands marketed in China are largely unencumbered by their legacies abroad, allowing for radical redefinitions. Buick, for example, known in the United States as a car for old people, is in China popular among wealthy businessmen. 

“Just imagine, for a moment, a Buick Regal,” says Engler, “A buyer could be around 30…. This is different from a consumer who is 15-20 years older and is in a different league.” 

 Some design considerations are wholly different in China, where a car’s most important role is often to serve as an indicator of wealth and power. Take a look at the Buick Business concept pictured at right. See the cut of the headlights, meant to mimic traditional Chinese liuli glass? See the chrome trim? Chrome is huge in China. See the connecting line between head and taillights and how it drops at the rear seats to emphasize the passenger and increase visibility?

Inside, the back seat envelops the passenger “like a clam,” Engler says, in the same manner as an emperor’s throne. Interior coloring is nearly monotone from the rear passenger’s perspective in accordance with Chinese expectations of a car. Notice the deep purple color. GM says was “chosen to elicit the right level of attention and respect” and named it euphemistically after a rare and slow-growing Chinese tree, It was designed, Engler says, to look like a smooth fabric blowing in the wind.

“It has a nice gesture to it, something which is very Chinese,” he adds. Try finding that look in an American GM product.

Describing the Shanghai office’s influence on the update of the modest Ford Fiesta, head designer Chelsia Lau uses words like “sleek” and “elegant,” phrases that might be a stretch to a potential American buyer. But in China, where families routinely pool their money to buy a car, it makes sense to make a car sound as upscale as possible. 

In China, the focus of control shifts from the driver’s seat to the passenger or rear seat, where the owner might prefer to sit, as it indicates higher status. Because the rear seat is the position of power, that’s where you’ll find controls for the radio, heat, sunroof and so forth. In the United States, of course, the driver controls everything.The same principle requires a new focus on the entire car. Designers place special emphasis on exterior styling, which is held to higher standard than in the West. Loosely-fitted panels and extraneous add-ons are not tolerated, as the exterior is subject to a particularly laser-like focus, and buyers want to be seen in the best.

 “Yin and yang, black and white, balance is very important to a Chinese customer,” says Engler, who spent two decades designing in Europe before moving to China. “Balance and harmony, those are the key words here for design. You cannot skip it, you cannot work around it.”

Automakers have begun to step outside their traditional stomping grounds to introduce vehicles exclusively to China. These cars, designed and built in China, are the first tentative steps toward adapting to Chinese consumer preferences. VW’s Lavida, for example, is a fairly conservative remaking of the ubiquitous Golf. Chevrolet’s Sail is a classic brand resurrected for China.

In some ways, China is a more advanced market. Pollution regulations, which are in some ways stricter than the U.S. and Europe, translate to limited engine size and fantastic fuel efficiency, trends which some predict will envelop the Western markets in the years to come. Research into battery technology has a higher priority in China than in the United States, one result being an already-evident edge in some aspects of batteries.

The design trend isn’t all one-way. Chinese domestic manufacturers have long eyed lucrative Western markets for their products, and they face similar challenges in producing cars that appeal to Western consumers. The result has been some pretty weird ideas, a few of which were exhibited at the recent Detroit Auto Show.

But this may be the year we’ll find out just how well Chinese manufacturers have done: BYD, well established in China, plans to introduce an all-electric car to North America, and several other domestic Chinese companies have announced plans to enter the market soon.

Volvo is likely to end up in the hands of China’s Geely, and Hummer may be China-owned by the end of the month. Bits and pieces — a Ford engine, the Wheego Whip chassis — are just the beginning.

With the demands of the enormous Chinese market, the expansion of Chinese companies into the West and the introduction of Chinese vehicles to U.S., American consumers should expect to see some Chinese characteristics make their way across the ocean. “Decoration to enhance proportion,” says Engler, “may show up in North America in coming months.”

The increasingly early influence of Chinese design bureaus on globally designed cars means we might soon recognize that new cars are a little toned-down — balanced, as a Chinese designer might say. That doesn’t mean the Chevrolet Corvette or Ford F-150 will suddenly be remade. But some of the characteristics of Chinese cars and the influences of the people buying them will inevitably make their way to the United States.

That isn’t a bad thing. Because maybe the Mustang could use a little more harmony.

Main photo: General Motors. Ed Welburn, GM VP of global design, discusses design at the 2009 Shanghai auto show. Read More http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/02/automotive-design-for-china/#ixzz0fzWzBBiN