Norway's Think to Produce,

DETROIT – Norway's Think Global AS, with backing from U.S. venture capital investors, plans to produce and sell a small all-electric car in the U.S. that could go as far as 110 miles when fully charged – fresh evidence that the race to woo American consumers with electric cars is heating up and drawing interest from the same investors that helped build Silicon Valley.
Norway's Think Global plans to launch an electric car, called the Think City, in the U.S. in 2009.

The Oslo-based electric carmaker, which recently set up a U.S. office in Menlo Park, Calif., is trying to determine what geographical areas to focus its sales activities on, with an aim to launch the car – the Think City – in 2009. Think, a Ford Motor Co. unit until the U.S. auto maker sold it to a Norwegian company in 2003, is also searching for a site in the U.S. and Mexico to assemble the car.

Jan-Olaf Willums, Think Global chief executive officer, said Think plans to sell the City, to be priced less than $25,000, in densely populated cities because of the car's limited range. The car is just hitting the market in Norway, Sweden and Denmark where a typical user drives the vehicle for a relatively short commuting distance and plugs it into an electric outlet in his garage to charge it overnight.

"What we have is a city car so we would focus on big cities," Mr. Willums said, noting that Think may focus on markets on the West Coast such as San Francisco and Seattle. "But we think there's an opportunity for us also on the East Coast, or any city in the U.S. that wants to encourage use of pollution free electric cars. We don't care if it is in Texas, we will be there."

Mr. Willums declined to estimate U.S. demand for the City car, but Ray Lane, managing partner of venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins, Caufield and Byers, which has invested in Think, believes Think could eventually sell as many as 30,000 to 50,000 City cars a year in the U.S. once production ramps up and a sales network for the model is fully established. In Norway, Think is rushing to boost production to 10,000 a year this year to meet demand in Europe.

According to a Think spokeswoman in Oslo, Think Global has raised about $95 million from an array of investors in Europe and the U.S., including GE Energy Financial Services and RockPort Capital Partners. In addition, the company also received backing, which Mr. Willums described as "substantial," from Kleiner and RockPort to set up Think's North American unit.

Mr. Willums said Think's North American executives, among other tasks, are currently looking for a site to produce the City. "Because of the dollar's extreme weakness, it doesn't make sense to ship cars across the Atlantic." The Norwegian executive said Think would like to see which state and city could provide the "best deal," referring to investment incentives such as tax breaks.

In addition to the City, Think plans to add to its product lineup in late 2010 in Europe a second all-electric vehicle: the Think Ox, a five-seat car-SUV crossover. Using currently available battery technology, the car has a driving range of about 150 miles when the vehicle is fully charged. A U.S. launch is expected to follow shortly after, Mr. Willums said.

Kleiner, one of the key investors for Think, is perhaps Silicon Valley's best-known venture-capital firm and a backer of household tech names such as Netscape Communications, Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc. Kleiner and other venture-capital investors who helped build Silicon Valley are now clamoring to back the race to develop and market an electric car in the U.S., investing in little-known upstart companies such as Aptera Motors Inc. and Phoenix Motorcars Inc., both southern California companies. Tesla Motors Inc., the high-profile company that is close to shipping a $98,000 electric sports car, has raised $105 million from investors, including VantagePoint Venture Partners, Technology Partners, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Think's planned entry into the U.S. market follows decisions by General Motors Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. and others to market electric cars with a small gasoline engine they describe as a driving "range extender." Those small combustion engines work as generators to feed electricity to the car's batteries when they run out.

Other companies, most notably Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., plan to go a different direction. The two Japanese auto makers believe battery technology has not advanced far enough to make electric cars practical and are focusing their efforts on making gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius, more fuel-efficient and affordable. Toyota has said it plans to test the feasibility of an electric car with a range extender, however.

The Think City, when it hits the market in the U.S., will be equipped with three optional, high-powered batteries. U.S. consumers will be able to choose from what Think describes as a "sodium battery" system with active materials composed of sodium, nickel and iron, as well as from two types of lithium-ion batteries from two U.S. companies: A123 Systems of Watertown, Mass., and Enerdel. Enerdel is the joint-venture battery company owned 80.5% by Ener1 inc. and 19.5% by auto-component supplier Delphi Corp.

Write to Norihiko Shirouzu at norihiko.shirouzu@wsj.com

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Drowsy driving is equal to drunk driving

Around Memorial Day, the chances are good that either you or somebody that you are sharing the road with today has been out and about, spending the day with family or just enjoying their time off. There have surely been many hours spent behind the wheel for drivers across the country. Hopefully, drunk driving is kept to a minimum. But, there is another possible problem-driver on the road: the drowsy driver. It's likely that most of us have had that feeling behind the wheel, where we struggle to keep our eyes open. A new study from the National Road Safety Foundation, which is a non-profit group that produces driver aids, suggests that those drowsy drivers are equally as dangerous as drunk drivers. According to its research, a third of drivers polled admit to falling asleep behind the wheel in the last year alone. Suggestions for combating drowsiness behind the wheel include the obvious: pulling over, drinking a coffee or two and waiting about half an hour for the caffeine to hit your bloodstream. Consider this a friendly reminder to be safe out there.

[Source: National Road Safety Foundation]

Press Release:

Drowsy Driving as Dangerous as Drunk Driving

More than a third of drivers have dozed at wheel; National Road Safety Foundation offers tips to stay awake on the road

As people jam the roads and highways over the Memorial Day weekend, which marks the start of the peak summer driving season, there's greater risk of being -- or running into -- a drowsy driver, says the National Road Safety Foundation, Inc., a non-profit group that provides free driver safety films and programs including its newest, called "Recognizing the Drowsy Driver."

"A day in the sun can make you tired," says Adele Kristiansson, director of marketing and legislative affairs at the National Road Safety Foundation.

"Drowsiness is a condition most drivers fail to recognize, and it can be as dangerous as drinking and driving," she adds. "Studies show 60 percent of us have driven while feeling fatigued, and more than a third admit to having fallen asleep at the wheel in the past year. Drowsiness is a factor in a substantial number of traffic crashes."

Experts list several signs that should warn a driver to stop and rest:

-- Difficulty focusing, with frequent blinking
-- Daydreaming or not remembering the last few miles driven
-- Head nodding
-- Repeated yawning or rubbing eyes
-- Drifting out of your lane, tailgating or hitting shoulder
rumble strips


If you experience any of these warning signs, pull over at the next exit or a safe rest area and take a break or a 20-minute nap. Have a cup or two of coffee or caffeinated snacks and allow 30 minutes for the caffeine to enter your bloodstream. Don't drink alcohol or take medication.

Sleep-induced crashes are often very serious, since the driver does not take evasive or corrective action as he loses control of the vehicle.

Over the past 40 years, the National Road Safety Foundation has produced films and teaching materials that have been used to train millions of young drivers about the dangers of drinking and driving, speeding and aggressive driving. The Foundation's newest program, "Recognizing the Drowsy Driver," is available free by calling 1-800-SAFEPATH or visit www.nationalroadsafety.org for a free download of it and other driver safety programs.

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The Car of the Future: It Talks, It Thinks, and It Can Drive Itself

Monday morning, August 17, 2020, and you're off to work. You hop into the driver's seat, which, like the cabin temperature, is adjusted precisely to your liking. Even though your daughter used it to go to a friend's house last night, the car knows it's you driving now. So the satellite radio has switched from R&B (your daughter's favorite) to your preferred all-news station. The car's electric motor runs on hydrogen, and has already been topped off, automatically, from an appliance in your garage. So far, so good.

You glide onto the freeway ramp and decide to get a jump on the workweek. Setting the automatic pilot, you call up the office e-mail through the on-board computer. Guided by advanced cruise control, GPS, and sensors embedded in the roadway, the car stays in its lane, maintains a safe distance from other vehicles, and alerts you to your exit. Once in the parking lot, you check the fuel gauge and figure you've got more than enough juice to make it home. So you plug into the city's power grid to feed it electricity generated by your car -- for which you'll get an energy credit later on.

Sounds great, doesn't it? What this cheery vision of a morning commute hides is a growing sense of urgency on the part of the world's automakers. The current model for making and selling cars in the United States -- big vehicles with big fuel tanks and sky-high costs -- has almost driven the auto industry off the road. No one's predicting that gasoline prices will come down dramatically anytime soon, if ever. The pollution and energy consumption, plus the traffic, created by so many cars will simply force the industry to change.

The questions are what, and how soon. Experts generally agree that we're on the verge of an era of new fuels. "We have to find alternatives," says Larry Burns, vice president of Research and Development and Strategic Planning for General Motors Corp., and one of the industry's most optimistic visionaries. "By 2020, we're expecting 1.1 billion cars and trucks on the planet, compared to 750 million today. Imagine 125 freeway lanes running side by side, bumper to bumper, going all the way around the world."

The leading candidate to replace good old smelly gasoline is hydrogen, the most plentiful and available element on the planet. No one geographical region has a monopoly on it -- so there's little chance of a production cartel, like OPEC. And in theory at least, hydrogen will deliver superior fuel efficiency with no air pollution. Already, the major automakers are working on hydrogen-fed fuel cells. Demonstration hydrogen-powered vehicles are on the roads, and Burns predicts real consumers will be behind the wheels by 2010.

Others, however, believe hydrogen cars are much further in the future, maybe even a half-century away. For starters, the fuel cells made with today's technology are hugely expensive. Science knows how to make them -- just not how to make them cheaply. Add to that the lack of a hydrogen-fueling infrastructure, and technical difficulties of storing and handling hydrogen, and you're looking at years of work ahead.

"Fundamentally, we see no game-changing technology available by 2020," says Bob Rivard, vice president of Advanced Technology and Product Marketing for automotive supplier Robert Bosch Corp. "We'll see evolutionary steps, not a paradigm shift." Among the stages he envisions are cleaner, more fuel-efficient gasoline-powered vehicles, along with alternative fuels and new propulsion systems. Gasoline-electric hybrids, like the Toyota Prius, Ford Escape, and Honda Civic and Insight, will be more common. "As much as we'd like to be getting around in flying saucers, the reality is that by 2020 we'll still be driving vehicles that use fossil fuels," says Mary Ann Wright, Ford Motor Co.'s director of Sustainable Mobility Technologies and Hybrid Vehicle Programs. "But I do think there will come a point in time when every vehicle will have some kind of hybrid technology."

Within the next decade, expect to see more clean diesel-powered engines, like those available from Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz. These vehicles are up to 40 percent more fuel-efficient than gasoline cars, and produce about 15 percent less carbon dioxide. The downside of diesel? Oxides of nitrogen -- known as NOx -- are potent irritants. Other new gasoline replacements to watch for: biofuel and biodiesel, and natural gas.

If there's disagreement over just what will power the car of the future, there's no debate about how cool the actual vehicles will be -- very, very cool. Electronic functions, driver preferences, wireless connectivity -- it's all in the pipeline, coming at us fast. Picture this: It's 2020 and you're driving home from work on the freeway. But there are no road signs anywhere, not for stores, gas stations, restaurants or even the local exits and interchanges. There's no need for them -- your car's computer keeps you oriented and on track. (It also knows the speed limit, so you'll have no excuses with the local cop.) Can't recall if you need milk for breakfast? Your car's computer contacts your home inventory system to check. Sure enough, you need milk -- and OJ too. The interactive systems take over. Your car spots a convenience store at the next exit and zaps your grocery list ahead. When you arrive, everything is bagged and ready for pickup.

"By 2020, it will no longer be a big deal to have Internet connectivity almost anywhere, anytime," says K. Venkatesh Prasad, technical leader in Ford's Infotronics Technologies Department. He notes that the youngest of the year 2020's new generation of car buyers is about three years old right now. "That means everyone coming into the auto market will have known nothing but the Internet, and he or she will take it for granted," he says. Far-fetched? Prasad thinks no more so than what was once another radical idea -- distributing money from machines called ATMs.

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