Zenn Motors Switches Strategies From EV-Making to Electric Drive Marketing
By John O'Dell September 29, 2009
Canadian NEV-maker Zenn Motor Co. says it will stop making and marketing its $16,000 (U.S.) cityZenn low-speed neighborhood electric vehicle (right), drop plans for a highway-legal Zenn car and is switching its business plan to become distributor of an EV drivetrain.
The company said it is partnering with EEStor, a secretive company that claims to have developed an ultracapacitor-based EV battery that can deliver up to 300 miles of highway-speed range on a single 5-minute charge.
Zenn CEO Ian Clifford told the Toronto Star that it no longer makes business sense for the small company "to go into the distribution and sales" of EVs because of "the way things have really changed over the last year."
He was referring both to the growing number of large automakers announcing electric vehicle plans and to tough new safety rules in Zenn's home province of Ontario that would have required a number of expensive changes to Zenn's cars to make them street legal. Zenn also took a financial beating - along with the rest of the auto industry - as the recession slowed sales this year of its low-speed EV.
While Texas-based EEStor has not yet shown a working model of its ultracapacitor-cum-battery, Clifford said Zenn, which owns a 10.5 percent stake in the company, is "working on a daily basis with EEStor on this final milestone" in battery development that "takes us to commercial viability."
Zen, he said, will market the battery as part of a drivetrain system it is calling the ZENNergy drive.
Clifford said his company has exclusive marketing rights to auto and automotive component makers for systems in new cars weighing up to 3,000 pounds and to sell retrofit systems for cars more than one year old.
It all depends, however, on EEStor actually coming through with its long-promised but still unseen battery.
On that front, EEStor founder Richard Weir has said his company plans to deliver the first working units to Zenn in the 4th quarter of this year and EEStor recently applied for Underwriters Laboratory certification.
We still not gonna hold our breath.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
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