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According to Richard Kasper, president of the GEM division, the car is turning a profit. And though he wouldn't release actual sales figures, he said in an interview in Fargo last month that sales for 2004 were running 30 percent above projections.
The Global Electric Motorcar was the brainchild of Dan Sturges, now director of Mobility Lab, an automotive research center in Southern California that he founded in 2001. He first envisioned the GEM when he was an automotive-design student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1986. "I was just interested in the future," he said in a telephone interview last month. "When I couldn't find any manufacturers to produce any prototypes, I set about to start up a company."
That company attracted backing and made the trans2, a GEM forerunner, in Livonia, Mich. But after 350 were sold, at $7,000 each, the molded plastic body panels began to weep an oily fluid that ruined the finish, required a recall and essentially bankrupted the company. A private investor from Fargo bought its assets for under $300,000 to start Global Electric Motorcars, began production and sold GEM for "somewhere north of $30 million" two years later, Mr. Sturges said. He is philosophical about missing the windfall, expressing gratitude that the car was kept alive.
On a stormy afternoon last month, Mr. Kasper proudly showed off the sparkling 100,000-square-foot plant in Fargo, which employs 80 people and is capable of turning out 200 GEM's a day. Skeletal, evolving cars hung from a mobile assembly line.
At the early stages, components like disc brakes and the G.E. engine, which spins backward to charge the battery during braking or coasting, were bolted to a tubular steel frame. Soon came the windshield and six lead-acid batteries, rechargeable through 3,500 to 5,000 miles. Toward the end of the line, cars picked up options like doors, a pickup truck bed, a plastic trunk or a clip-in carrier for golf bags.
Inside a door-equipped $10,000 GEM, Mr. Kasper pointed out the slide-down windows, windshield wiper and stereo, and a heater-defroster that the GEM communications manager, Christopher Mohs, said was powerful enough to get him comfortably to work in a North Dakota winter. Mr. Kasper showed off the simple controls — a fast-or-slow switch, blinkers, horn and a digital display of speed and charge level.
Off for a ride with four people aboard, the little GEM surged forward, creating a pleasant whirring hum. Like any electric, it produces prodigious torque, which gets it up to speed in a hurry, yet it rides smoothly. There is no shifting of gears or engine smoke, just pure, quiet energy. At speed, it was at once reminiscent of a golf cart and a small sports car.
With this little car, suited to the short trips that are most common for Americans, Daimler is staying in a business others have left. Ford and General Motors both sold electrics, including larger cars, in the 1990's, but have ended their programs and called back their full-size models for crushing. (Many big automakers focus instead on gas-electric hybrids and fuel-cell vehicles.)
LARRY OSWALD, GEM's chief executive, said that at first Daimler's attitude was "simply the realization that these cars would qualify and with minimum investment, at least meet the letter" of the no-emissions mandate. Then, he said, "I think there was a transition of thinking."
Now GEM's seem to be finding niches in the market.
Don Jenkins an entrepreneur in Key West, Fla., rents them to tourists and locals who quietly ply the streets of Key West, and more recently, Myrtle Beach, S.C. He said that electricity to charge the 30 cars on his main lot runs only around $140 a month. He gets $29 to $39 for two-hour rentals and $139 to $189 overnight, and has no trouble finding customers. "It feels good to drive one," he said. "They're not real cheap to rent, but 99 percent of renters seem very happy that they did."
Two years ago, Larry Dustman of Chandler, Ariz., bought a GEM to get around his home at Stellar Air Park, a fly-in community of 500 homes where, he said, there are now at least 11 other GEM's. A loophole in Arizona law at the time allowed buyers a $10,000 state refund on a new clean-air vehicle, making GEM's essentially free. The state soon closed the loophole, but Mr. Dustman was so smitten that he started NEV Accessories, a GEM accessories business, alongside his longtime sales of add-ons for the Thing, a utilitarian VW sold in the United States in the 1970's.
Today, he offers GEM add-ons like front and rear towing hitches, roof racks and high-performance wheel setups, including burly off-road knobbies or larger-radius wheels with low-profile tires, that can speed a GEM up to 30 or 35 m.p.h. Custom gearing can make them go even faster, though Mr. Dustman warns that this is not for use on public roads. He also builds custom steel beds, boxes and a hot box for GEM-based food vendors and is trying to develop rooftop solar energy collectors that will let the car recharge itself.
Back in Laguna Beach, the section of the Pacific Coast Highway that runs through town is often full of Hummers, BMW's, Cadillac Escalades and other vehicles far larger and faster than the GEM. While this tends to keep the Trevinos on the back streets, Mr. Brown motors along on the main drag unconcerned.
"People come up close behind you because you're only going 25 miles per hour," he said. "I know they have to get places quickly, but at the same time, I want to make them aware that there's a different way of doing things. Plus, I mean, you get to stop and smell the roses."
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According to Richard Kasper, president of the GEM division, the car is turning a profit. And though he wouldn't release actual sales figures, he said in an interview in Fargo last month that sales for 2004 were running 30 percent above projections.
The Global Electric Motorcar was the brainchild of Dan Sturges, now director of Mobility Lab, an automotive research center in Southern California that he founded in 2001. He first envisioned the GEM when he was an automotive-design student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1986. "I was just interested in the future," he said in a telephone interview last month. "When I couldn't find any manufacturers to produce any prototypes, I set about to start up a company."
That company attracted backing and made the trans2, a GEM forerunner, in Livonia, Mich. But after 350 were sold, at $7,000 each, the molded plastic body panels began to weep an oily fluid that ruined the finish, required a recall and essentially bankrupted the company. A private investor from Fargo bought its assets for under $300,000 to start Global Electric Motorcars, began production and sold GEM for "somewhere north of $30 million" two years later, Mr. Sturges said. He is philosophical about missing the windfall, expressing gratitude that the car was kept alive.
On a stormy afternoon last month, Mr. Kasper proudly showed off the sparkling 100,000-square-foot plant in Fargo, which employs 80 people and is capable of turning out 200 GEM's a day. Skeletal, evolving cars hung from a mobile assembly line.
At the early stages, components like disc brakes and the G.E. engine, which spins backward to charge the battery during braking or coasting, were bolted to a tubular steel frame. Soon came the windshield and six lead-acid batteries, rechargeable through 3,500 to 5,000 miles. Toward the end of the line, cars picked up options like doors, a pickup truck bed, a plastic trunk or a clip-in carrier for golf bags.
Inside a door-equipped $10,000 GEM, Mr. Kasper pointed out the slide-down windows, windshield wiper and stereo, and a heater-defroster that the GEM communications manager, Christopher Mohs, said was powerful enough to get him comfortably to work in a North Dakota winter. Mr. Kasper showed off the simple controls — a fast-or-slow switch, blinkers, horn and a digital display of speed and charge level.
Off for a ride with four people aboard, the little GEM surged forward, creating a pleasant whirring hum. Like any electric, it produces prodigious torque, which gets it up to speed in a hurry, yet it rides smoothly. There is no shifting of gears or engine smoke, just pure, quiet energy. At speed, it was at once reminiscent of a golf cart and a small sports car.
With this little car, suited to the short trips that are most common for Americans, Daimler is staying in a business others have left. Ford and General Motors both sold electrics, including larger cars, in the 1990's, but have ended their programs and called back their full-size models for crushing. (Many big automakers focus instead on gas-electric hybrids and fuel-cell vehicles.)
LARRY OSWALD, GEM's chief executive, said that at first Daimler's attitude was "simply the realization that these cars would qualify and with minimum investment, at least meet the letter" of the no-emissions mandate. Then, he said, "I think there was a transition of thinking."
Now GEM's seem to be finding niches in the market.
Don Jenkins an entrepreneur in Key West, Fla., rents them to tourists and locals who quietly ply the streets of Key West, and more recently, Myrtle Beach, S.C. He said that electricity to charge the 30 cars on his main lot runs only around $140 a month. He gets $29 to $39 for two-hour rentals and $139 to $189 overnight, and has no trouble finding customers. "It feels good to drive one," he said. "They're not real cheap to rent, but 99 percent of renters seem very happy that they did."
Two years ago, Larry Dustman of Chandler, Ariz., bought a GEM to get around his home at Stellar Air Park, a fly-in community of 500 homes where, he said, there are now at least 11 other GEM's. A loophole in Arizona law at the time allowed buyers a $10,000 state refund on a new clean-air vehicle, making GEM's essentially free. The state soon closed the loophole, but Mr. Dustman was so smitten that he started NEV Accessories, a GEM accessories business, alongside his longtime sales of add-ons for the Thing, a utilitarian VW sold in the United States in the 1970's.
Today, he offers GEM add-ons like front and rear towing hitches, roof racks and high-performance wheel setups, including burly off-road knobbies or larger-radius wheels with low-profile tires, that can speed a GEM up to 30 or 35 m.p.h. Custom gearing can make them go even faster, though Mr. Dustman warns that this is not for use on public roads. He also builds custom steel beds, boxes and a hot box for GEM-based food vendors and is trying to develop rooftop solar energy collectors that will let the car recharge itself.
Back in Laguna Beach, the section of the Pacific Coast Highway that runs through town is often full of Hummers, BMW's, Cadillac Escalades and other vehicles far larger and faster than the GEM. While this tends to keep the Trevinos on the back streets, Mr. Brown motors along on the main drag unconcerned.
"People come up close behind you because you're only going 25 miles per hour," he said. "I know they have to get places quickly, but at the same time, I want to make them aware that there's a different way of doing things. Plus, I mean, you get to stop and smell the roses."
- steve 6-04-2004 7:31 am