EVLN(Pivco's Th!nk EV recharged! & can teach much to automaker designers)

[Bruce {EVangel} Parmenter <BruceDP@iname.com>]

EVLN(Pivco's Th!nk EV recharged! & can teach much to automaker
designers)
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EV - Plastics News (PLCN) ELECTRIC CAR SURVIVES FINANCIAL CRASH TEST
11/23/98 Copyright (C) 1998 Crain Communications, Inc. All rights
reserved.

Innovation can prompt its share of ulcers. Just ask the managers and
employees of the former Pivco AS in Norway, which in a six-week span
went from elation to despair to hope in a project that could have
long-term implications for plastics in the automotive industry.

The amazing twists in this saga of the maker of the developmental
Th!nk electric car, which sports rotomolded high density polyethylene
body panels, simply underscore the risks associated with thinking
outside the box.

Such risks are only magnified, as Pivco painfully discovered, when the
innovators involved must raise capital in today's volatile money
markets.

Eight years of development efforts by the 45-employee Oslo company
culminated Oct. 1 when it officially launched its two-seater Th!nk
vehicle at the European Electric Vehicle Show in Brussels, Belgium.
The firm announced its new rotomolding and assembly plant near Oslo
was all but ready. It also said that in March it would launch
small-scale commercial production, mostly for Norway's domestic
market, while continuing to negotiate with interested potential
manufacturing partners in China, Thailand and elsewhere.

The environmentally friendly car already was drawing rave reviews from
northern California, where it had been in test trials by San
Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit district as a so-called "station
car" that commuters could use to drive to and from public
transportation stations.

Three weeks later the vehicle took "pride of place" on the K'98
trade-show stand of resin producer Borealis A/S, whose precolored,
metallocene-catalyzed HDPE is used in six of the car's body panels --
sparking much interest and discussion at world's biggest plastics
expo.

Then, as it entered the stretch run, the project collapsed.  Perhaps
spooked by the rough-and-tumble stock markets, some of the large
Norwegian institutional investors who had supported the project
financially pulled their support, plunging Pivco into bankruptcy Oct.
30. In the frantic two weeks that ensued, Pivco management scrambled
to put together a rescue package before its fragile coalition of
suppliers dispersed and reallocated their staff and resources.

On Friday the 13th, ironically, they succeeded -- and a reconstituted
Pivco Industries AS was born. So, with the company's assets now in the
hands of a new coalition of investors that includes the firm's
chairman, employees and management, and a Norwegian plastics
processor, the Th!nk electric car is recharged, with a chance to ride
again.

Who knows how successful the novel car will be, or what impact down
the road its apparently successful application of rotomolding to make
PE exterior auto panels may have?

But electric-car enthusiasts, environmentalists, the plastics industry
and rotational molding proponents in particular, should heave a sigh
of relief that this relatively obscure company did not die a quiet
death in the November cold of Norway.

Pivco Industries may have much to teach other designers and automakers
-- if only its lessons can be received with an open mind.
 ...
 http://www.crain.co.uk/  pmitchellcrain@compuserve.com
Copyright (C) 1998 Crain Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Crain Communications Ltd
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