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107 comments on Friday open thread

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ericy on January 20, 2006 - 2:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Perhaps - I wonder if the point of the press release was to help raise funds.  I gather that the venture capital people are all eager to fund alternative energy types of things right now.

They aren't the only people thinking along these lines, however.  Volkswagen had a similar project - they had a turbodiesel two-seater with a carbon fiber body.  Theirs was only rated for ~260 mpg, and this was something that they did build and field test.  They didn't have any hybrid technology in there though.

They called it the '1-liter' car, meaning it would burn one liter of fuel to go 100 km.  They did unfortunately abandon the project:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/04/vw_abandons_its.html

The problem for VW was the cost:

But Volkswagen now says that it could not produce an ultra-economical car for less than €20,000 ($25,900)--too expensive for its target market.

I gather that the carbon fiber was the deal-killer here.  You need it to make the vehicle lightweight, but the stuff is expensive.

Now if this company (Accelerated Composites) has come up with a way to reduce the cost of making carbon fiber components, there could be value here if they were to simply license the technology to someone like VW who has sufficient experience to make an entire car.

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GreyZone on January 20, 2006 - 3:46pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That may be part of the venture capital play - get your name up in lights now, while the demand for fuel efficient cars is rising, and cause a big player to buy you out. This is common enough in other industries so I don't see why such a play could not be expected in the auto industry as well.
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Stuart Staniford on January 20, 2006 - 6:16pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
A press release is not how you raise venture capital.
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