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Mission: Bring electric vehicles to the masses and change the transportation system.
Goal: Electric cars owned and being used on the road.
We understand that this is an enormous task and are under no illusions about the scope of this.
This is NOT a small business.
We will be looking to make strategic partnerships and create business alliances to make this a viable, profitable and sustainable venture.
We are designing and costing an electric car called the "Mass-EV".
The unique and most important design goal for the car is the retail price.
We will be using cheap existing technologies to create a usable electric car which is priced the same as a current cheap car (£7,000)
The design of the vehicle will be usable for commuting and motorway driving.
It will be capable of motorway speeds (70mph) and will have a range of 100 miles on one charge.
Naturally the question on your mind.
In a word- incentive.
No car manufacturer has had the incentive in the past to produce an electric vehicle.
So why are they not doing it now?
The car manufacturers are currently selling oil fuel based cars and people are buying them.
Why would they change?
Major manufacturers are putting research money into hybrid cars and fuel cell cars, but not battery electric cars.
The problem with battery electric cars is to make them usable.
Battery technology is still developing and doesn't seem to be producing a good cheap solution any time soon.
There is also a now mature market for other battery technology which play a major role in the technology of the Mass-EV
The Mass-EV is not designed to be a "new technology" car.
It is designed to make best use of the current technology.
The Mass-EV will not be high-tech looking.
It will be designed to be a practical usable vehicle, not some futuristic car from the 24th century.
If the Mass-EV is successful in it's goal of bringing an EV car to the masses this will provide a ready-made target market for the battery guys.
These vehicles will need the batteries replacing as they expire.
If the battery technology companies know this they can start funding research to new battery technology knowing they will have large volume sales to pay back that investment.
This will (hopefully) kick-start the battery industry into producing the cheap good batteries and make the car even more value for money.
The chosen retail chain for the Mass-EV will be super-markets.
This will hit the target audience and avoid the resistance of the current car manufacturers.
Targeting high volume sales.
The costings are based on selling in the order of a million cars in total.
Obviously this will not be in the first months of trading.
Targeting rolling out the first cars in 2011 and looking to hit 100,000 to one million sold within 5 years.
Early market research show that the public do actually want a viable electric car and see the Mass-EV as being viable.
Some research among used car dealers show the they are confident they could sell the Mass-EV if it were available now.
Money will be raised in a staged investment plan:
£10k will fund the IP.
£100k will fund the prototype plus some early marketing campaign.
£1mil will fund creating the production facility.
All these figures are realistic estimates.
At each stage if there appears to be insurmountable issues there will be return on the investment through sale of the assets to existing car manufacturers.
Each vehicle will be sold at a target price of £7,000 (or perhaps £6,999)
The cost of this will be:
This is a preliminary model which needs refining
Each vehicle profits us by £500 (from our wholesale markup)
We start production beginning 2012.
We invest £500,000 in marketing each year except the final year.
We manufacture and sell 20,000 vehicles per year (100 per day (5 day week) for 40 weeks).
Notes: This will need 5-10 workers per vehicle * 100 vehicles = 1000 workers
1000 workers @ £10,000/year = £10,000,000 salary per 20,000 cars.
or £500 per car
This is added on to the base cost of the vehicle to make the production cost (parts & labour) £4,000.
Total profit after 5 years nearly £47 million with an initial investment of £1,110,000.