Posts Tagged ‘San Francisco’

by John Voltz for Cleantech Blog, March 2, 2010

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.

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[1] The EV1 had a nominal low price of $34K or ~$48K in today’s dollars though it was never sold only leased. Reportedly production costs were $80+K per vehicle at the time. Initial lease costs were $640/month or $900/month in today’s dollars. Later this dropped to $350/month or $ 500/mo in today’s dollars with many different incentives layered on.

by  Kamala Kelkar for the San Francisco Examiner, February 18, 2010

All-electric car manufacturers from Atlanta are using the Bay Area as a hub to sell their two-seater vehicles, which can reach 35 mph, plug in like a refrigerator and cost about $19,000.

Wheego signed a contract with family-owned dealer Ellis Brooks — located at 1395 Van Ness Ave. in The City — and will offer test drives from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday.

The company has been selling about 100 cars a month since October through about 20 dealers nationwide. It’s relying on the Bay Area to kick up sales because “it’s either the No. 1 or No. 2 market for new technology adopters,” Wheego President Jeff Boyd said.

The vehicle runs on sealed, lead-acid batteries, charges overnight and uses 90 percent fewer moving parts than a gas engine, Boyd said.
Wheego also is planning to release a higher-speed vehicle that can reach about 65 mph in the summer, but takes up about twice the amount of energy and would probably require an upgrade to outlets at home or a plug-in station.

There are about 25 plug-in stations in The City and about 10 in San Mateo County. However, Plug-In Bay Area, a coalition of electric and solar companies including PG&E, is banking on a $12 million state grant to add more stations and make upgrades.

Charging your car

There are about 130 charging sites in the Bay Area. About 25 of them are in San Francisco.

The City: Civic Center parking garage; Costco; General Hospital; Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf; Palace Hotel; Presidio Main Post; Toyota, Honda and Ford dealerships; SFO

SAN MATEO COUNTY

Colma: BART; Saturn dealership
Menlo Park: Sun Microsystems building
Redwood City: Electronic Arts
San Carlos: Liberate Technologies (by arrangement only)
South San Francisco: Costco

Source:  www.evchargernews.com/regions/ch-bay-all.html

kkelkar@sfexaminer.com

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Atlanta-electric-car-company-plugs-into-Bay-Area-market-84658442.html#ixzz0ftcjh9C7

 Atlanta, Georgia (February 17, 2010) – WHEEGO ELECTRIC CARS, manufacturer of all-electric vehicles, today announced it has signed Ellis Brooks Auto Center as its dealer with exclusive rights to sell the Wheego Electric Car product line throughout California’s San Francisco Bay Area Including San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Francisco Counties.

Wheego President Jeff Boyd says Wheego is targeting successful dealers such as Ellis Brooks who are interested in looking to the future with Electric Vehicles. “Ellis Brooks has the right culture, customer base, and location,” explains Boyd. “They are green in terms of the environment, but certainly not in terms of experience. They are seasoned professionals, and they will hit the ground running. Our low-speed vehicle is shipping now, and our full speed all electric car, named LiFe will be available to customers at Ellis Brooks Auto this summer.”

Ellis Brooks Auto Center, a family-run business, was established in San Francisco in 1939. John Brooks is the General Manager; his uncle Arthur is the Production Manager, and their mother/Grandmother, Marie Brooks, overseas the family’s auto holdings including Ellis Brooks Motors in Yreka, California.  The Brooks family sees Electric Vehicles as the future of the automotive industry. “We have weathered many economic cycles since 1939,” says Mrs. Brooks. “We’ve remained relevant and competitive because we listen to what our customers want. And what they are asking for now… is electric cars. The Wheego cars are all electric – no gas, no emissions. We are excited to be able to deliver an eco-friendly, affordable and innovative car to San Francisco.” 

Ellis Brooks will introduce the Wheego Whip to San Francisco with a test-drive event at their dealership on February 20. “We think people will be surprised at the performance and affordability of this car,” said GM John Brooks. “We invite the public, fleet purchasers and local media to take it for a spin.” The event will be open from 9:00a.m to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday February 20^th.

The Wheego Whip LSV (Low-Speed Vehicle) runs on sealed lead-acid batteries and qualifies for a 10% Federal Tax Credit in 2010. With a sticker price of $18,995, the Wheego Whip LSV net price is just over $17,000.

The Wheego Whip LiFe Full-Speed all-electric car is expected in the summer of 2010. A prototype of the car was unveiled in January at the Washington D.C. Auto Show. The Whip LiFe runs on a lithium battery pack, and will go approximately 100 miles on a charge. The sticker price on the Wheego Whip LiFe is targeted for the low $30k’s; the Whip LiFe qualifies for a $7500 Federal Tax Credit. Interested customers may reserve a car at Wheego.net/life.

Both Wheego Whip models are fully-loaded two-seat compact cars with fit, finish and features that compete with any other subcompact car on the market.  Features include remote keyless entry, air conditioning, and MP3 stereo system.

 About Wheego Electric Cars

Wheego Electric Cars is an innovation-driven and environmentally-conscious manufacturer of Electric Vehicles (EVs).  Under the leadership of Mike McQuary, CEO and former MindSpring entrepreneur, Wheego Electric Cars has become a leader in the integration of advanced technology components.  Wheego Electric Cars is one of the first EV companies to deliver affordable fully capable, street legal electric cars for everyday consumer use. For more information about Wheego, visit the company website at wheego.net.

About Ellis Brooks Auto Center

Established in 1939, Ellis Brooks Auto Center is located in the heart of San Francisco at 1395 Van Ness Avenue. Customer loyalty, satisfaction and repeat business are the cornerstones of the company. Ellis Brooks offers high-quality used cars and Wheego Electric vehicles. For more information about Ellis Brooks Auto, visit the company website at www.ellisbrooks.com or call 415-776-2400.