Mygreenwheels

My grandfather would caution me, “Believe half you see and one third of what you hear,” so if I give the Norway Post the benefit of the doubt, we do indeed have good news, I hope, from Norway’s EV contender, Th!nk Global AS.

Production of the world’s first properly engineered and mass produced pure plug-in EV, the Th!nk City, was cruelly terminated when Ford Motor Company sold Th!nk Nordic AS to KamKorp SA of Switzerland. They decided that the future lay with a self-drive PSV called the Th!nk Public. I have driven this utilitarian vehicle with room for four and a wash-down interior and it was an interesting product concept. It came in all-wheel drive and front wheel drive. You will still find it on the Th!nk Nordic website and more detail at Th!nk Global where you begin to patch a truer picture of the new EV beast to come.

Today the Norway Post revealed that the all new Th!nk City car would start production this summer at the original Think plant in Aurskog, about 40 minutes from Oslo. Ford had spent a cool $150 million engineering this baby, then it was hidden in the parts-bin until now. There’s no pic of the new car, just the old one which I drove for 18 months and still miss after Ford took it back and shipped it to the Museum of Science in sunny Glasgow sur La Clyde. I do not know if this piece from the Norway Post is based on an official release or a bit of sleuthing from an investigative journo. Here's where you can find this brief glimmer of Nordic EV light.

And the great news is that those lucky descendants of Vikings will get the new Think City 2 later this summer, three to five years before Arnie & Co can buy a GM “Volt” to burn up the Ventura Highway. That’s if the world ever has a chance to. Remember those concept cars of the 1930’s, 50’s and so on, the ones with turbojet power plants …. I am still waiting to drive one, as long as this time they burn hydrogen!

So, just five weeks into 2007, great news on the EV front …. the Vikings are heading for our cities again. Let me reach for my helmet, but this time it will contain single highland malt whisky and a big hug for Katinka von der Lippe, Chief Designer, Th!nk Nordic AS. Katinka and her team did a super job on cutie #1. I can’t wait for Cutie #2! Roll on the crazy, hazy days of an EV summer!