Can Think Really Sell Enough $41,000 City Electric Cars In U.S.?Can Think Really Sell Enough $41,000 City Electric Cars In U.S.?

Electric cars are much on the minds of green buyers these days, despite limited supplies of the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevrolet Volt.
But there’s also a second tier of suppliers, beyond the major carmakers, that also offers or plans to offer buyers their own plug-in electric vehicles.
One such maker is Think, the scrappy Norwegian company that’s produced the Think City two-seat electric car under various owners for more than a decade. The company has 2,500 plug-in cars on the roads globally–which, today, is more than Tesla (1,500) and even Chevy (a like number of Volts).
Assembly of Think City electric cars, Elkhart, Indiana, Jan 2011
Think is already assembling City cars in Indiana out of kits shipped over from a contract manufacturing plant in Finland.
But according to its battery supplier Ener1, a part owner of the car company, as of three weeks ago, Think had only managed to sell 100 cars in the U.S.
In January, the car maker told Ener1 not to ship it any more lithium-ion battery packs until it “rebalanced” its sales.
PHOTO GALLERY: Think City electric-car assembly plant, Elkhart, Indiana
Equally worrisome, Rockport Capital Partners, which had invested in the company and appointed a director to its board, is “no longer an investor” in Think.
One scenario would be that Ener1, which has said it would accept equity in lieu of receivables, becomes a larger stakeholder in Think, perhaps even its majority investor. But much remains to be determined, and there will clearly be more news to come.
The company’s U.S. representatives did not respond to inquiries from AllCarsElectric.
Assembly of Think City electric cars, Elkhart, Indiana, Jan 2011
Analysts have long been skeptical as to whether Think could sell sufficient quantities of its 10-year-old, two-seat electric car, especially when it was priced at $41,000–exactly the same as the 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car, which has four seats, a nationwide dealer network, and no issues with range anxiety.
Manufacturing director Karl Turner said in January that Think “hopes to bring down” the price to $34,000 or thereabouts. He said then that consumer sales were targeted to begin in the third or fourth quarter of this year.
 
[VentureWire via Dow Jones]

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