{"id":234951,"date":"2010-01-27T00:38:08","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T05:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/itecsinsider.com\/?p=13287"},"modified":"2010-01-27T00:38:08","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T05:38:08","slug":"think-to-tap-rv-industry-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/234951","title":{"rendered":"Think To Tap RV Industry Skills"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ElectricBy Rhoda Miel<\/span><\/p>\n

(Plastics News, January 15, 2010) Detroit – Norwegian carmaker Think is getting ready to begin making its City electric car in the U.S. next year, and is looking for local suppliers that will be ready to begin production of key parts, including exterior plastic body panels. \u201cOur initial production in the U.S., if everything goes according to plan, will be in the first quarter of next year and we hope to be sourcing the body panels in the U.S. for that initial production,\u201d said Keith Takasawa, director of product development for Think North America.\u00a0 Oslo-based Think is now building cars for the European market from a plant in Finland. With $47 million worth of new backing from a range of investors including New York-based Ener1 Inc., the firm is ready to expand with a fully tested electric car for the U.S. market.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The $24.7 million operation is going into an Elkhart, Ind., facility that, until recently, was making doors and windows for recreational vehicles. Ener1\u2019s lithium-ion battery making unit, EnerDel, will supply batteries for Think from Indianapolis.<\/span><\/p>\n

With those two parts of the production puzzle already in place, Think now is lining up other suppliers. The firm likely will tap into the Elkhart region\u2019s plastics expertise in a variety of molding techniques first developed for the recreational vehicle industry, Takasawa said in a Jan. 12 interview at the North American International Auto Show, where the Think City was part of a demonstration fleet of electric and hybrid vehicles.<\/span><\/p>\n

The City\u2019s two-seat, all-electric car uses plastics extensively to reduce weight and improve performance. Its exterior is made of coextruded acrylic styrene acrylonitrile\/ABS, which is pressure formed. The interior is mostly polypropylene, relying heavily on expanded PP foam. Some of the EPP is wrapped in a polypropylene textile; some is intentionally left exposed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Think\u2019s low-volume production \u2014 with a capacity of 20,000 vehicles annually at the new Elkhart plant \u2014 lends itself to non-traditional molding compared to elsewhere in the auto industry where injection molding is king, Takasawa said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe RV industry knows how to handle a lot of different plastics at relatively low volumes,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t need 100,000 or 200,000 units a year to be profitable. Between a workforce that already knows how to build RVs and the supply base, we think this will be a good situation for us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Takasawa said that after years of struggle, Think now finds itself in a good position for a global audience ready to take a serious look at electric vehicles. The company has been making cars since the late 1990s, first under original owner Pivco Industries AS, then under a series of owners that included Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford Motor Co.<\/span><\/p>\n

Think has feedback from more than 300 million miles of real world driving from its customers. Its electric engine can take the car 100 miles on a charge and the U.S. version will have a top speed more than 70 miles per hour. It already meets strict crash and performance regulations in Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe know how to design and build electric cars,\u201d Takasawa said. \u201cThe other guys are just getting into it and don\u2019t have the experience that we do.”\u00a0 Click here to read more…<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rhoda Miel (Plastics News, January 15, 2010) Detroit – Norwegian carmaker Think is getting ready to begin making its City electric car in the U.S. next year, and is looking for local suppliers that will be ready to begin production of key parts, including exterior plastic body panels. \u201cOur initial production in the U.S., […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}