First Drive: Think City EV's New Lithium-Ion Batteries Give Much-Needed Range, Power

First Drive: Think City EV's New Lithium-Ion Batteries Give Much-Needed Range, Power

By John O'Dell July 23, 2010

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

Last time I sat behind the wheel of a Think City EV was in 2001, when Ford Motor Co. owned the brand and was trying to figure out what to do with a tiny battery powered, plastic-bodied, two-seat commuter car from Norway.

It used nickle-cadmium (NiCd) batteries, had 50 miles of range on a good day, a top speed of 55 mpg and could usually get you across the intersection before the light changed from green to yellow.

Ford couldn't figure out how to sell it - or didn't want to at the time - and dumped the brand in 2002, subjecting Think to a glum few years of insolvency and near collapse before its present ownership team, led by U.S. battery maker Ener1, took the reins last year.

Now Think is back, selling cars in Europe and planning a U.S. factory in Elkhart, Ind. (with the help of a hoped-for federal loan guarantee that's still in the application process), and a retail launch here in the late third quarter of 2011, with Los Angeles, New York and EV-friendly Portland, Ore. as the initial major target cities, we're told.

As the company has promoted itself here, we've been bugging the U.S. team for a car to test and earlier this week we finally got one.

It even looks nice in the country! Think assures us the retail models won't carry all the decals, but the matte black finish is one of the colors molded into the plastic body.

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It was an older European model but represented - except for the creaks and rattles caused by lots of previous testing use over there - pretty much what we'll be getting in the U.S. model.

And by a nice stroke of luck, we got one of the first to come to the U.S. with the new 25 kilowatt-hour lithium-manganese battery pack from Ener1's Indiana-based battery unit, EnerDel, replacing the German-made MES-DEA Zebra sodium battery Think had been using.

The lithium pack, of which 95 percent, or 23.7 kWh, is usable power, cuts the nominal maximum range to 100 miles from 112 but increases power and recharges a bit faster - 4 hours on a 240-volt cable that snakes out from the Southern California marketing agent's offices in an industrial park near Costa Mesa's fabled South Coast Plaza retail mall.

The batteries were fully charged when I climbed in after talking for a bit with Tim Cunningham, Think's Western Region sales manager.

He showed me the instruments - blessedly sparse,  just a battery charge indicator, a speedo and odometer and a gauge showing how much power is being consumed, or restored with regenerative braking - the seat adjustment levers and knobs, the latch that opens the hood (in case I wanted to shoot a photo of the tightly-packed plumbing packed in there) and the emergency 110-volt charging cord coiled in the hidden storage space under the surprisingly sizable cargo compartment's carpeted floor.

Then I was off, with instructions to try not to run out of juice and to bring it back in six hours.

It was a work day, so I didn't get to drive it all six hours as I had stories to write and post, but I drove back to my home office the long way, through the foothills near my house, to give it a good suburban workout.

I kept the speedometer needle -yes, an analog dial! - at between 40 and 50 mph when I could, climbed several steep hills with the "eco" mode dialed in for increased regenerative braking (the gear indicator reads Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive and Eco) and after 33.2 miles of fairly lead-footed driving the battery gauge showed I had 58 percent of the charge remaining.

My wife joined me on the return trip, adding a bit of extra weight (but a very little bit, dear) to help tax the battery, and we used the freeway, pegging the tiny car's go-pedal to the floor and making a respectable 68 mph for about 10 miles.

When we handed it off to Cunningham's office manager that afternoon, it had 43.5 miles on the trip meter and 38 percent of the battery charge remaining, so we figure that we could have easily gotten 75 miles of travel at a pace most Think EV drivers would rarely match.

In its intended mileau of relatively low-speed, stop-and-go city commuting, the lithium battery pack out to easily deliver the claimed 100 miles of range.

Inside, the Think City is surprisingly roomy, with high seating (the battery's underneath) and a great view of the road through tall windows and an all-glass rear hatch.The fabric-covered seats are comfortable though not terribly grippy and the suspension, while a little stiff, still gives decent ride quality.

The interior is nothing to write home about - not terrible but a long, long way from what a modern major automaker delivers even in its smallest cars - an open tray instead of a closing glove box, a pair of rather flimsy cup holders that unfold from the side of the center console up near the passenger's left leg and, in our car, an aftermarket radio that played through only one speaker. 

We presume the radio, at least, will be better in the retail model.

Acceleration was barley ok, certainly faster than the old Ford model's 0-30 in 7 seconds and quick enough to get you across an intersection ahead of the little old guy in the 1982 Buick and without worrying about being stuck in the middle when the light changed.

But we felt a little exposed trying to come onto the freeway and match the speed of the cars in the right lane.  We later clocked 0-30 acceleration at about 5 seconds with two of us on board, and we did a 0-50 "sprint" in just under 16 seconds - we tried for 0-60 but the short side road we were on ran out of asphalt before we could wind the speedometer needle around the magic number.

Handling was ok - it's not a sports car but with the weight all at the bottom it holds the road well and corners without the tippiness you'd expect in a tall, short car.

Our tester had manual steering, which was nice and tight and centered, but Cunningham told us all U.S. models will come standard with power steering (and air conditioning, an amenity our car lacked) so we'll have to revisit that issue.

With the windows up the Think was fairly quiet inside, even at freeway speeds. With them down at speed, though, it was hard to hear the radio or hold a conversation without shouting.

All in all, a quite competent city car, with lots of cargo space, plenty of cabin room for two and headroom enough for my 6-2 frame with a few inches to spare.

CEO Richard Canny, told us that the company doesn't plan to rest with the Think City and that it already is working on several new - and presumably better-appointed - models.

Meantime, he said that getting the Think City to market in the U.S. sooner than later is critical to the company's financial plan.

Think hopes to gather up loads of valuable California ZEV (zero emission vehicle) credits that can be sold to car makers that can't or won't meet the state's mandate for introduction of battery electric cars starting in 2012 (Honda, for example, has already purchased more than $130 million worth of credits from Tesla Motors to use to offset its California ZEV requirement if it can't get EVs into market soon enough).

The company has raised $87 million in private funding in the past year and has become profitable in Europe, Canny says, "We're pretty well funded," although Think might go after a small private equity infusion in conjunction with its U.S. launch, he said.

There's also that federal loan the company's seeking to help outfit its Indiana factory and begin developing future models, and as we reported earlier this week, Think also hopes to make money selling its latest-generation electronic-drive power control system to other automakers.

The challenge Think will face, then, isn' financial -at leat not immediately. instead, it is pricing and marketiung.

The Think City 's U.S. price hasn't been set yet, but the hints are that it might come in with a base price, before federal and state incentives, at close to $28,000. That's only $4,000 less than Nissan's 5-passenger, nicely finished Leaf and about where Mitsubishi says its more polished four-seat iMiEV city EV will be when it is introduced here next year.

In early days, the pricing might not matter much - there likely will be more demand for small city EVs than there will be cars to fill it.

But as inventory builds and more competition comes into the market, Think could have a struggle keeping up with bigger, better-financed major automakers offering more amenities and better fit and finish for about the same outlay.

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.