Could China Deliver Affordable PHEV by 2009 with Malcolm Bricklin?
Jan 9, 2007 (From the CalCars-News archive)

Malcolm Bricklin is a wild card, a high-flyer and
a crash-lander. Now his vision is about PHEVs.
The stories from USA Today and Reuters give the
facts -- and say he's already working on
prototypes for a series PHEV that could cost
$25-$30K. The flamboyant story by Washington
Post's Warren Brown, who's seen everything, says
Bricklin plans to talk to Carroll Shelby and Lee
Iacocca about all this. And Brown cites
speculation that Ford and Toyota may be talking with each other about PHEVs.

http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&
storyID=2007-01-08T070431Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-282606-1.xml

AUTOSHOW - Bricklin says he's talking to 15 Chinese carmakers
Mon Jan 8, 2007 7:10 AM IST16

By James B. Kelleher

DETROIT (Reuters) - Malcolm Bricklin, the
maverick entrepreneur whose efforts to import the
first Chinese-made car to the United States have
suffered repeated delays, said on Sunday he is
talking with 15 new potential partners in China.

In an interview during the North American
International International Auto Show, Bricklin
also said he still has more than $50 million in
deposits from would-be dealers who had signed up
for his earlier efforts to bring in a Chinese car.

On Sunday he said that the import, now be
targeted to be in U.S. showrooms by 2009, would
be powered by an electric hybrid plug-in engine,
a change that contributed to the recent split
with his original Chinese partner, Chery Automobile Co.

Bricklin said the powerplant would be similar to
the one General Motors Corp. used in a concept
car it unveiled on Sunday, the Volt, which is
designed to use little or no gasoline.

GM said the Volt will draw power exclusively from
a next-generation battery pack recharged by a
small onboard engine -- if the technology is ready in two or three years.

"That's the way we're going," Bricklin said.
"They have a engine bigger than we want....We can
have a little engine, a little engine, that runs
at one constant RPM and does nothing more than
fill the battery up full time along with
regenerative braking and you can get 100 to 150 miles a gallon."

Bricklin said his company, Visionary Vehicles,
was talking to 15 Chinese manufacturers "to make
sure that we're going to end up with three that we like."

He said a working proof of concept would be built
in six months and that the cars would be in production by 2009.

"We're starting to build the prototype," he said.

Bricklin said he still had $2 million deposits
each from 27 interested dealers. But he said he
had returned $200 million he'd raised from George
Soros after the Chery deal collapsed.

"They're guys who want to something for the
family, the next generation," Bricklin said of
the dealers. "They're scared to death of the car
business as it stands today. They know there's
going to be a big deal in clean and a big deal in
economy. And they just know that's going to drive
the market for the next generation."

Bricklin grabbed headlines with plans to bring
Chinese-made cars to the U.S. market. But his
venture has faced repeated delays and deep-seated
skepticism from industry analysts.

In September, Bricklin, best known for bringing
the low-cost Yugo car to America, said his
ambitious plans to import a range of Chinese-made
vehicles had been delayed until the end of 2008 at the earliest.

This fall, Bricklin said he had signed 50 dealers
to sell the Chery-made vehicles, which he has
pitched as a lower cost alternative to luxury
brands such as BMW, Audi and Mercedes.

On Sunday, Bricklin said the first Chinese-made
car he will introduce to the United States would
be in the same category as a Mercedes E-Class but
sell for $15,000 to $25,000 less.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2007-01-08-bricklin-hybrid_x.htm

100-mpg hybrid by 2009, Bricklin promises
Posted 1/8/2007 More
By James R. Healey, USA TODAY

DETROIT — Indefatigable auto entrepreneur Malcolm
Bricklin, no longer planning to import
Chinese-made cars to the U.S., now says he wants
to market a line of 100-mpg plug-in hybrid
vehicles that he says could be priced 20% to 30%
less than gasoline-engine vehicles.

If he's successful developing such vehicles, his
market timing could be just right. Americans have
accepted hybrids such as the Toyota Prius for
their fuel savings and their high-tech panache.
Plug-in hybrids, which can recharge from an
electrical outlet and thus travel farther without
using gasoline power, are the latest wrinkle.
General Motors and Ford Motor both showed plug-in
hybrid concept cars Sunday at the North American International Auto Show here.

Bricklin says he's in talks with 15 Chinese
manufacturers about building the cars in China to
take advantage of low wages and modern equipment.
"Use the Chinese advantage to make it cheaper" he
says, "instead of it being $3,000 more." The
prototype, he says, is being built in the U.S.
"We'll show it to them, say, 'Here's our car; what can you build it for?'"

He figures six months to finish a working
prototype and two years, more or less, for
regular-production models to hit showrooms here.

"Mid-2009; if I'm wrong, it'd be late '09."
Bricklin says. They would be sold by 28 U.S.
dealers who had signed to sell Chery (CHAIR-ee)
vehicles and who make up his distribution network called Visionary Vehicles.

Chery late last year signed a letter of intent to
make small cars for DaimlerChrysler that would be sold worldwide.

Chrysler Group CEO Tom LaSorda says the agreement
with Chery has yet to be approved by both the
DaimlerChrysler and the Chery board of directors.
He said it?s unclear when Chery could start
providing cars for DaimlerChrysler to sell.

Bricklin's financing for the Chery venture was
uncertain, causing the Chinese maker to waver.
Unable to raise $200 million from prospective
dealers, Bricklin eventually — about a year ago —
got Atlantic-Pacific Investment to agree to
provide $225 million. Financier George Soros put
up the money, but that wasn't public at the time.

Now that Chery has signed with DaimlerChrysler
and Bricklin's deal is dead, he says he'll raise
the $200 million from dealers and from "private
investors who are increasing their stake (in
Visionary Vehicles). It's not coming from Soros."

As envisioned, the hybrids would run mainly on
lithium-ion batteries — considered the latest
technology for hybrid cars but still unproven.
The batteries would be recharged by plugging the
car into a power outlet, and by a small on-board
gasoline engine that would recharge the batteries, but not power the car.

General Motors announced similar technology for
its Chevrolet Volt, the concept car introduced at
the auto show Sunday. One important difference:
The Volt's gasoline engine would help power the vehicle, if necessary.

CHEVROLET VOLT: Concept offers 150 mpg, but the
plug-in hybrid needs a new technology

GM Vice President Jon Lauckner says the chemistry
inside lithium-ion batteries works well in
individual cells. "But putting 100 to 200 cells
together (in a vehicle-size power pack), getting
them to charge and discharge evenly, and manage
the (heat) load" remains a challenge.

Bricklin says his first model would be a midsize
four-door sedan priced $25,000 to $35,000. A
crossover SUV and a folding-hardtop convertible would follow, he says.

Bricklin is known for bringing Subaru and the
less-successful Yugo brand to the U.S. and for a namesake sports car.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/08/AR2007010801542.\
html
washingtonpost.com
A Visionary Plugs In to the Electric Car Race
By Warren Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 9, 2007; D03

DETROIT -- To say the least, Malcolm Bricklin,
chairman and chief executive of Visionary Vehicles, is tenacious.

Bricklin brought Subaru, the gull-winged Bricklin
SV-1 and Yugo automobiles to North America from
the late 1960s through the early 1980s.

Some of his ventures, such as that with Subaru,
were bona fide successes. Others, such as that
with the Bricklin SV-1 and the ill-fated Yugo, were dismal failures.

Now, from all public appearances, Bricklin seems
to have experienced another embarrassing flop --
the termination of his two-year campaign to bring
affordable, high-mileage cars into the United
States from Chery Automobile of Wuhu City in China's Anhui province.

Chery, instead, has chosen to enter the U.S.
market by supplying small cars to
DaimlerChysler's Chrysler Group, which
desperately needs economical, fuel-efficient
automobiles to help stem the loss of buyers to
Asian rivals in an era of rising fuel prices.

Bricklin, clad in his trademark black clothing,
said in an interview here at the North American
International Auto Show that he is undaunted by Chery's decision.

"God bless them," he said of the decision by
Chery's executives. "It's not the way they wanted
to come into the United States. They would have
preferred coming in under their own brand name.
But it has to be good for Chrysler."

Bricklin's New York company has turned its
attention to the seemingly impossible task of
beating giants such as General Motors and Toyota
in the race to market plug-in electric cars.

GM's Chevrolet Division on Sunday presented a
prototype of a plug-in electric model, the
Chevrolet Volt, to the international media in
Detroit. GM's chief domestic rival, Ford, had a
huge prototypical display of what it calls its
"HySeries Drive" technology, which features a
plug-in electric, hydrogen fuel cell that can
power a car 25 miles at speeds of up to 85 miles
per hour on a fully charged lithium-ion battery
and then go another 200 miles on electric power
generated by a small gasoline engine.

Ford and Toyota officials have been meeting in
Japan on an unspecified project. There is
speculation in the global auto industry that the
two companies might be working on a deal for plug-in electric cars.

But GM and Ford officials say they are at least a
decade away from coming up with affordable,
reliable lithium batteries that would make
plug-in electric cars feasible. Bricklin says he
can do the job in half that time, or better.

"I don't have to worry about amortizing the value
of transmissions and other components I'm using
in traditional gasoline-powered cars," Bricklin
said. "I don't have that kind of infrastructure. I can start fresh."

Bricklin acknowledged that the bigger car
companies have billions of dollars to pour into
the development of plug-in electric vehicles and
that they are loaded with technological and
engineering talent. He said they are serious in
their pursuit of electric automobiles. "And that
they are smart enough" to eventually bring them to market, Bricklin said.

"But there is no way that they can just walk away
from everything that they have invested in
current technology, and that includes Toyota's
complicated, expensive [gas-electric hybrid] system," Bricklin said.

The yet-to-be-named Bricklin plug-in electric
would be "simple and affordable," Bricklin
promised. "It's going to be a fabulous plug-in
electric that gets the equivalent of 100 miles
per gallon. It will be luxurious, and it will
cost 30 percent less" than anything produced by
the big companies, Bricklin said.

He was sketchy on the details. But he is not
alone among senior, rambunctiously visionary
automotive veterans in thinking and talking about
developing an inexpensive, environmentally friendly, high-mileage automobile.

Other like-minded individuals include two
industry icons, racing great and automotive
designer Carroll Shelby, who turns 84 this week,
and Lee A. Iacocca, 82, the legendary chairman of
what was once an independently owned, American-controlled Chrysler.

In recent years, Shelby and Iacocca have
discussed the possibility of developing a car
that can sell for $10,000 and get at least 50
miles per gallon. Iacocca, at Bricklin's urging,
once tried his hand at developing a market for
electric bicycles after retiring from Chrysler in 1993.

"The technology wasn't ready to make it work back
then," Bricklin said. "But it's ready now. We can
do this. We can give America an affordable car
that gets 100 miles per gallon. We have to do this."

He said he plans to discuss the idea with Shelby
and Iacocca. He beamed at the thought -- what a
magnificent last hurrah. Three members of the
"automotive over-the-hill gang" beating the big
companies to market with a 100-miles-per-gallon car.

"That would be something," Bricklin said. "We can
do this. I know we can do this."