rick woodbury: ok, so first i'mgoing to make a very bold statement, and then i'mgoing to defend it. and then later you guys canask questions as well. i believe that there's a marketfor about 150 million of these cars right now. not that that market could beachieved immediately, but that's how many people would bedriving these if they were cheap enough to drive. and the reasons are many.
but the most basic one is just,what do people do with their cars? i once heard that if you'regoing to innovate something, don't give peoplewhat they want. watch what they do. i've been watching what they dofor over 25 years, and it makes me crazy. they sit in traffic jamsfor many, many hours. there's actually $67 billionper year wasted because of
lack of productivity becauseof traffic jams throughout the country. it also wastes about fivebillion barrels of oil, which is enough to fill gasoline tanktrucks from new york city to las vegas and allthe way back. that's just the wastedue to traffic. if everything were freeflowing that's how much would be saved. so there are 118 million peoplethat work in the us.
and of them, 92 million driveby themselves in a car. public transportationis only about 6%. there's a couple percentwalk, and so forth. but 92 million people drive bythemselves to work every day, an average of only 20 miles. now lead acid batteries can gothree to four times that amount, and they'repretty cheap. and the cost per mile with leadacid batteries for that average commute is onlyabout a penny a mile.
here in the bay area, i think,with pg & e, i think it's maybe a penny anda half a mile. but it's still very, veryreasonable compared to the price of gasoline which is wellover ten cents a mile. so battery replacement andelectricity is not an issue. but i don't think peoplewill buy the car because it's electric. i mean some peoplewill, of course. but in england, people arepaying $6.75 a gallon and
still commuting 50miles to work. so there's something about theconvenience of having a car that seems to overwhelmeverything else. so this is the first car, tomy knowledge, that can fit two in a lane. it actually fits in half a lanewith more clearance than a truck has in a full lane. a standard freeway laneis 12 feet wide. a truck is allowed to benine foot, four inches
from mirror to mirror. that means they onlyhave 16 inches of clearance on either side. to take a six foot lane, if youput a stripe in the lane and said, we want to double thecapacity of the freeway, or at least a lane on thefreeway, you would have a lane six feet wide. you'd have 16 inches ofclearance, would give you 40 inch width for a car.
our car is 39 inches wide. it's just under a meter. so it does fit side by side inthe lane as you're seeing in the video here. we've driven for 40 miles sideby side with these two cars, and quite comfortably. i've also driven side by sidewith motorcycles, and they also felt comfortable. in reality, cars don't generallylike to be side by
side, though. they can stagger. but that doesn't mean you'renot doubling the capacity. because if they're staggered alittle bit so you're not side by side, it's much easier. trucks, when they'reon the freeway, they are side by side. because they're 70 feet long,and so they're side by side with that small clearance forvery long periods of time.
it is rather nerve wracking. but in this car, you can seeyour mirrors out of the corners of your eyeand you know where you are in the lane. so it's really not nervewracking at all. you could drive in a six footlane, 70 miles an hour all day long, and not eventhink about it. anyway, i think thatit's the future. any crowded city needsthis desperately.
and we're just starting slow andcarefully, building a good foundation. we had two choices when westarted this company. one was to build the carscheap as we could. and that would probablybe a $60,000 car. and the other choice was tobuild a really high end car. and our target pricewas $85,000. but unfortunately, theprices crept up. but the thing is, is that acar in low production just
costs a lot to build. and there's nothing youcan do about that. and if we had gone the cheaperoption, the people who wanted an electric car like thiscouldn't afford it. and the people who could affordit wouldn't want it. so we tried to make it appeal tothose who could afford it. and luckily we got a check fromgeorge clooney one day in the mail for ten grandas a deposit. and he started asking,where's my car?
and we delivered it. so that's our first deliverylast year. york brown has anorder for one. we have another customerin berkeley. we're building theircars right now. it's going to be abouta six month process to build these cars. and they keep getting moreand more refined. we've made some majorimprovements.
we're going with an allstainless steel chassis. it has a full nascar roll cagemade of chrome alloy. it has four times more steelin the door than a volvo or any other car. even the ford excursion hasone bar in the door for protection, and it's not reallyattached to anything substantial other thanthe sheet metal. whereas ours, we have specialdesign hinges that are as strong as the rest of the rollcage, and tie those four bars
into the rest of the roll cagewith pins and was specially designed hinges. so we built a car that webelieve is the, safest the fastest, and so forth. i have another videothat will kind of answer a lot of questions. so let me play that. there we go. [video playback]
-is it a new sports car aboutto hit the streets? the sculptured lights. the sporty wheels. a racing car cockpit. and power to burn. [wheels squeeling] whoa, wait a minute,what's this? it's the tango. the commuter car ofthe 21st century.
man. it's got tons of power. it feels incredibly stable. and it just goes. and it's fun to drive. [end video playback] rick woodbury: this particularautocross, this is the monterey historic carraces weekend. and the concourse italianoinvited us there.
my son had only driven oneautocross before, and he was only three seconds behindan experienced ferrari driver in his 308. [inaudible phrase]. -a new national study on trafficjams suggests the problem is bad andgetting worse. it found the average americandriver spends at least 51 hours a year caughtin congestion. but now, an inventor inwashington state has come up
with an amazing way tocut traffic in half. it's the mini car. early show nationalcorrespondent hattie kauffman has more. -imagine if you could fit twiceas many cars onto the freeway, twice as manycars into each lane. well, you could, if everyonedrove a skinny car. -and on the street, when everyparking spot is full, well, just squeeze in between them.
-it's definitely a head turner. -how fast? -130 miles an hour. zero to 60 in four seconds. -you're kidding me! -just think of the parkingspots you could get. the traffic you'd avoid. the tango may revolutionizethe road. -i think this is the biggestrevolution since the model t
and transportation. -you had to thinkoutside the box. for the early show,hattie kauffman. cbs news, spokane, washington. -as fun as it is to watch thecar, it's almost as fun to watch people watch the car. -it's cute. -outrageous. -this is great.
how do i look? -because if they don't come upand say, wow, they certainly think, wow, and want to see whatthey look like in what could be the world's fastest,funkiest electric car. -wow. it's really spaciousinside here. -what about crash worthiness? -crash worthiness is betterthan any production car that i know of.
it's got a nascar roll cage. -and why use gas whenyou can go electric? you can juice up a tango inas little as ten minutes. -the facts that make electricwork in this case, for one, that the average commute'sonly 20 miles. and this'll go four timesthat, 80 miles. -so they paintedit ferrari red. -i think that's great. -wouldn't forgetthe cup holder.
-yeah, it does get alot of excitement. so the guy who drivesthis car-- chick magnet. -so you get sports carenthusiasts who probably turn up their nose and go, heh, thisgolf cart cannot beat me. -i'd love to meet themat a stoplight. -zero to 60, how fast? -in four seconds. -sweet.
rick woodbury: ok, so it wouldbe zero mentions if it weren't for the tire smoke. actually we set the torque soit doesn't spin the tires. you can just adjust thetorque infinitely. you can adjust the horsepower. we have a valet mode, so if youdon't want people driving it over a certain speed, youcan set it up as you wish. ok, so this, i'll just gothrough this presentation quickly and skip alot of slides.
because it's really designed foran investor presentation. i need some help to get it backto the beginning somehow. so we have one of our investors,a surgeon from harvard medical school,and he's a medical device analyst now. so he put together thispresentation for us. and it's really just targetingcertain angel investors. we're trying to break it awayfrom the automotive market, because the automobile marketis not investment worthy,
according to most people. they say that it's too capitalintensive, you can't make a quick enough profit,et cetera. so we're trying to show thatthis really isn't like the automotive market anymore thanthe pc was part of the main computer market. it's really a differentmarket. it's going a different place. and when people think of this asan automobile, it's kind of
like me, i think back in '75,when friends of mine were getting into the pc business. i said, what are you going todo with this stupid thing, balance your checkbook? i thought, what a waste,and so look now. and so i can't be too hard onthe people that don't think this has a future. they just don't get it. they will.
so anyway. so we have a deep-seatedconsumer dislike. 50 minutes a day ingridlock traffic. they hate it. we can fix that. and this is the only personwho's not frustrated. but he's taking a little bitof risk, which most people won't take. only 1% of the commuting trafficuse a combination of
bicycles and motorcyclestogether. so it is a very small percentageright now. and i think the mainreason's safety. the other is weather. we solved both ofthose problems. so lane splitting is legalaccording to california highway patrol web page. motorcycles can lane split aslong as it's done safely. it's only legal here incalifornia, possibly nevada
and arizona, and basically allthe rest of the world. it's absolutely the way to getaround in taipei for example, but all over england and europeand the orient, lane splitting is perfectly ok. and this car is five inchesnarrower than a gold wing. so it actually lane splits alot easier, and obviously a lot safer than others. so i don't think there'llbe a lot of resistance. government, policy makers arevery interested in saving
money on freeway construction. so i think we're seeing a lotof positive from both the state and the federal governmentlevel as far as this being a really goodalternative, and something that they want topush forward. i had a situation where i wascoming off the bay bridge going toward berkeley. and it took me 20 minutes toget from where i was to the overpass up ahead.
and i was counting the time,timing the motorcycles. it was 20 seconds. that's a 60 to one advantage. and i'm sure a lot of peoplewould have loved to have that. and if i looked around me, i'dfind that 90% of the people had only one personin each car. so these are basicspecifications. to be able to drive comfortablyin a 70 miles an hour in a six foot half freewaylane, it's the only
car in the world thatcan really do that. the next competitor is about48 inches wide or more. i think that people seeing asmall car think it's a death trap immediately. so we have to prove to them thatnot only is it not any less strength than a regularcar, but it's way beyond that. it has four times moresteel in the doors. it has a full racecar roll cage. these cars are crashedroutinely.
people ask if our car'sbeen crash tested. every weekend by nascar,200 miles an hour. they crash, tumble,t-bone each other. and the guys walk outalmost always. so there's really a lotto be said for that. at the drag strip, wehave managed to beat a shelby cobra. that was kind of exciting. you're able to keep a lot closerproximity to the car in
front of you as well, becauseyou always know you have an escape route. you can be over near the lineand you just have that comfort zone that i can't explain. you can only feel itby driving it. because you just know whereyou can go, and whatever happens, you're able to avoidcollisions much easier than you could in a car. so parking's kind of neat.
i've been down in la. i was driving george clooney'scar in los angeles. and i pulled into a parking lotthat was completely full, and i saw two hummers goingaround and around. and i just pulled in to thislittle triangular spot, just like one of these here, andjust climbed in and out. san francisco, colestreet hardware. i went down there, there werepeople circling around looking for a place to park.
and i was in and out, and thesame people were still going around looking. on geary boulevard, as you goout geary, there's just parking in the residentialarea. there's really noother parking. so people are going up and downthe residential streets. but with this car you pullaround the corner, and there's a four foot space betweenevery single home in the entire san francisco avenues.
and you just pull into the firstone, park perpendicular, you're done. it's very convenient. so even though it may not bethe best configuration for dating, because your date wouldhave to be behind you, it will fit two sixfoot six people. but after a couple gets to knoweach other really well and they can handle being thatseparated by a seat, then maybe they'll take this.
because it's so much quickerthan they can get on about their business. high school girls said nah, ithink i'd rather be side by side with my boyfriend. so anyway, we havefour wheels. that requires it being sold asa kit car until we raise some $50 million or so and do afull fmvss certification. it's extremely expensive toenter the car business with a fully certified car.
they require airbags. they require passing crashtests without seat belts. the airbags have todo all the work. so quite a bit of engineeringinvolved. it's really to protect the carcompanies more than anything else i think. it's like if you meet thesespecs, then you can't get sued for a safety item. i think that's probably what'sbehind the very complex rules.
because they're really notnearly as safe as a typical race car. but yet safety isn't reallythe top priority. i think i went over this. gas prices will drive it, buti'm not counting on it. our cost of goods sold rightnow is about $85,000. we're working on that. i think we'll come out withother models in the future that will be less expensive.
but we're going to have tosell a bunch of these for $108,000 in order toget the costs down. it just takes a lot of toolingto reduce costs, so one step at a time. we do have kind ofan incentive. if people try to sell-- male speaker: you're runninglate on time. you won't have time to answersome questions. rick woodbury: oh, sure.
yeah, let me do that. ok, so i can takequestions now. yes. audience: a couple ofmonths ago, i was driving a rental car. and it was hit by an suv. myrental car was totaled. everyone in the car was eitherinjured or killed. there was some minor bumperdamage on the suv. and i don't think that's because of how muchmetal i had around me.
it's just the weightdifference. rick woodbury: right. audience: what doesthis thing weigh? rick woodbury: it weighs3,000 pounds. it weighs as much asa mid-size sedan. so you have thatin your favor. and to ward off suvs, youactually have bars that are up right at the top of the door. there's a bar that goes allthe way up through here.
and then there's anotherone down here. another one through here, andthere are vertical bars through here. so no matter where you gethit, you have a lot more protection. obviously, if you get hit hardby an suv in the door, there's not any car that's going toprotect you from your head hitting the grill. so a side airbag, andwe're planning
on that in the future. we have a four point shoulderharness in there, so those belts can actually airbags. goodridge has designed an airbagbelt that would quite nicely to protect youin a side impact. but you're definitely better offnot having the car going through your car. i saw a cadillac at the evidenceyard up in spokane, and the driver's door wastouching the passenger door.
someone had driven rightthrough the car. so you can talk about crumplezone all you want, but i'd say integrity is the first thing. race cars have to have that. they talk very littleabout crumple zone. crumple zone is reallynice for marketing. it's cheap. it's easy to convince people of,but that's not really the point of safety.
safety is keeping you alive ina crash, which is what race cars have to do. audience: what makes[inaudible]? rick woodbury: it's extremelylow maintenance. you have brakes andtires, obviously. the brushes on the motors aregood for about a hundred thousand miles or so. so they're about $25 everyhundred thousand miles. so maintenance is almost nil,except for batteries.
and batteries you kind of choosebased on what your driving style is. according to optima yellow tops,the cycle life chart, they say that they'll go about80,000 miles if you drive it to 30% dead each time. so that would be about threecents a mile, extremely inexpensive. the [? hawkers ?] that we havein here aren't so bold with their claims. they say thatthey'll get twice as many
miles if you emptythem completely. in other words, 400 cyclesinstead of 200. so that would give you every fewyears, or every say 50,000 miles or so, you'd have toreplace batteries that would cost about $2,200. but the cost per mile i thinkis the key thing. and we have that onour web page. we have whole charts that workthat out and compare it with the honda insight and othercars like that.
audience: what kind of drivetrain is it, and does it have regenerative braking? rick woodbury: it doesn't haveregenerative braking. regen is most easilydone with ac. and we'd love to have an acdrive system in there, but it's even much more expensivethan what we have. we use the highest torque motors,the same kind used in freight trains. so we have actually overa thousand pounds of
torque and zero rpm. and our controller is actually600 kilowatts, which translates to about805 horsepower. so no ac drive wouldhave that. we'd rather have regen, butdoing it with traction motors, or with series one motors,is very complicated. and i think that the failureswould be higher, so, keep it simple right now. audience: can your batteriesbe recycled?
rick woodbury: yes,absolutely. they must be. in fact we're offered-- yeah, he asked if thebatteries could be recycled, and yes. we're paid $5 a battery, soyeah, you'd be silly not to. that metal lead's worth a lot. we're kind of followers of billmcdonough's cradle to cradle concept.
and as much as we can, we'remaking this car something where every single componentwill be totally recyclable or disposable. but i think the key thing is tokeep all of the technical nutrients, things that arenecessary and rare, and keep recycling those. so keep stainless wasstainless, copper with copper, et cetera. audience: as far as creaturecomforts, does it have things
like air conditioning? rick woodbury: it has airconditioning, and air conditioning system and theheater actually i think better than in a regular car. because you have a variablespeed control. rather than sitting in idle ina normal car, maybe that's when you have the most heat,that sun's baking down on you and the car's just idling. so with this one, you can crankit up to 8,000 rpms and
really crank whileyou're idling. it doesn't matter. it's totally independent ofwhat your engine's doing. it's got its own littleelectric motor. so, it's a good system. audience: do you plana convertible model? rick woodbury: convertible? yeah, we plan allthese models. i mean, we want to build 150million cars in 30 years, so
yeah, they're goingto be everything. but one step at a time. we can just barely affordto put these out at this price right now. it's a very slow, painstakingprocess when you don't have tons and tons of capitalbehind you. so we just try todo a good job. yes audience: what's the schedulefor building affordable cars?
rick woodbury: it reallydepends on investors. i've met with three billionaireswho all are very interested. but i think that they'd rathersee us learn on somebody else's money. i don't know how to explainthat, but it's like if you have something that's verycapital intensive, and for someone to put out the kind ofmoney that it requires to get a car company up and going,there has to be an awful lot
of trust. and so they generallylike to invest in companies that are alreadymaking a profit. and we're just aboutthere right now. we actually can sellcars profitably. ok. audience: is the center ofgravity on this significantly lower than a regularcar system? rick woodbury: yes, very, verysignificantly lower. it's like 12 and a quarterinches off the ground.
it actually has thesame roll over threshold as a 911 porsche. so you think of a porscheas wide like this. you tilt it up to about56 degrees and it balances on two wheels. our car is like this, but youlean it over until the roof's almost on the ground, and that'swhere it balances on two wheels. so it's kind of like a leadcart, a go-cart with lead, and
then you're sitting on top. all the weight's down low, 2,000pounds under the floor, and then the rest of it's spreadout throughout the rest of the car. ok, well i guess thatwraps it up. thank you.
Post a Comment for "hybrid suvs seat 7"