That’s the early word on V-Vehicle Company, which will occupy the former Guide Corp. plant in Monroe, LA. In addition to Silicon Valley VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Automotive News [sub] reports that Texas natural gas baron T. Boone Pickens is also providing financial backing to the new company which “will produce a high-quality, environmentally friendly and fuel-efficient car for the U.S. market,” according to a statement. “The goal of the company is to provide the American buyer greater product value and a superior automotive experience.”
This might be easily dismissed if the firm’s technical staff weren’t led by former Mazda design chief Tom Matano, designer of the original Miata. Matano’s assessment of the project is that “this car will be another icon of American industry.” Watch a video on the new venture at the Louisiana Economic Development website. The talk of “re-imagining the car company” and “iconic automobile” rhetoric sound a lot like the Gordon Murray T.25 project, but the Pickens investment points to a natural gas powertrain.
Needless to say, we’ll be watching this start-up with considerable interest.
I won’t be. I give this about as much likelihood as that MG plant that was supposed to build cars in Oklahoma.
I shall keep my fingers crossed.
More evidence that the future, of industry, is south of the Mason-Dixon. Good for the people in LA, they finally have leadership and progress on the horizon.
Sounds like T. Boone smells some federale bucks here…
And using natural gas as a motor fuel will guarantee higher prices (more profit for his heirs, I suppose).
But, it sounds intriguing, nonetheless.
I lived in Monroe for 3 of the longest years of my life. Good luck with the plant.
Given Louisiana’s reputation for strong financial control and firsthand observation, this could be a bigger boondoggle with less tangible result than Tesla.
It is impossible to ssay if this project has any real legs-we’ve seen nothing.
However I personally believe that there is excellent opportunity for “ground-up re-think” of the automobile such as Gordon Murray is working on.
Could be fun after all.
Bunter
There’s a reason I’ve called Louisiana my favorite third world country for decades…
So T. Boone Pickens is trying to get everyone’s car to drink his finite natural resource. Trade off oil for natural gas.
What about the infrastructure to support these CNG cars? Have these people not studied the Honda Clarity?
This system is not any better than what Detroit or ANY other car company has come up with or has now. It will be entertaining to watch them flop.
I was interested (at least on some intellectual level) right on up to the point where T. Boone was mentioned.
Yeah, just what we need is some natural gas cars. Sure… we can build that infrastructure up from scratch and then run out in 20 years…
It would be an icon all right, but one of stupidity and failure.
Here’s hoping its a nice conventionally powered, fun to drive (ala Miata) decent American small car instead.
Pickens wants to get onto the electric car business. His idea is to generate electricity with his natural gas supplies until he can build enough wind generation capacity.
Saw him not too long ago on one of the Sunday programs talking about this while steering clear of the fact he wants to be the one providing the energy. Oh, and he was looking for government handouts to help this all along.
It might be a CNG-powered PHEV. That way it can run on both natural gas that he sells or electricity that his wind-farms produce. Mix in a little green cred and government subsidy money, and it’s win/win/win for T.Boone.
Dreamers in the auto business are plentiful. Very few make the first cut at a product. Some of these things sound good but they forget to tell you that they are counting on exemptions from Federal regulations granted to small volume producers and that their finances assume large subsidies from various government agencies.
Don’t stand in line at your V-Vehicle dealership!
Yeah, they’ll probably fail.
But where would we be if all the more adventurous we get is a Camry?
I hope they (and all those other crazy, different, startups) can take a shot at it. Remember how nuts Ransom Olds was back in 1902?
Didn’t see anything in the press release that suggested V-Vehicle Company is working on a CNG powered car. If so, Lousiana has very well developed intrastate and interstate pipeline networks and huge natural gas reserves.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publications/ngpipeline/ngpipeline_maps.html
Lousiana would tend to benefit from the use of natural gas as a vehicle fuel. Because CNG is significantly less expensive that gasoline, the fuel itself doesn’t need subsidies to sell.
It never ceases to amaze me how many different people that have taken credit for designing the original Miata. I didn’t think that Mazda ever had that many employees, period, let alone having that many assigned to the Miata design team.
For the record, the original Miata was designed and engineered by a very small team, some of whom worked lots of unpaid overtime and on weekends because they really wanted the car to be a success and make it into production. The Pontiac Aztek design team on the other hand was much larger, though they all seem to have disappeared into the witness protection program.
Absolutely nothing that I’ve read about this new auto venture suggests that it could possibly be a success on its own economic merits. It smells to me like a government subsidy magnet. The financial engineering will undoubtedly be much more advanced than whatever product they ever end up building.
“Absolutely nothing that I’ve read about this new auto venture suggests that it could possibly be a success on its own economic merits. It smells to me like a government subsidy magnet.”
Which is no different than every single military contract over the last two decades – billions for helicopters we don’t need while the troops build their own armor from scrap.
At least some of us may actually get to use the fruits of this subsidy.
Actually you can produce a lot of natural gas by shooting steam through powdered coal. In such cases it is called “town gas” or “producer gas” and usually needs to go through another step to clean it up, it is more toxic than regular NG and is odorless, so more dangerous to humans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_gas
The track record of industry outsiders trying to reinvent the car is terrible. But hey, if T. Boone wants to give it a try, why not? It’s his money to burn, and we the consumers get to watch and decide if we are interested in what he’s selling. At the very least it will be good theater, and if this venture fails at least a bunch of laid-off workers will have gotten a temporary reprieve.