Venture Vehicles shows new design proposals

Venture Vehicles shows new design proposals

The team at Venture Vehicles is still hard at work on their proposed three-wheeled, tandem seat EV. Although the layout of the vehicle seems to be fixed, the final design of the bodywork is still a work in progress. The company has posted renderings of the the two latest candidates on the forum at their web-site. The company will now proceed to make full-scale of these two final designs before making a decision on which will get built. They hope to have most of the major components sourced and a name chosen by the beginning of the New Year.

C-NET tries to count all the electric car start-ups

C-NET's Michael Kanellos did a little thinking out loud this week when he tried to list all of the electric car start-up companies (not major automakers working on EVs). He counted 16 small companies. The names on this list will be familiar to just about anyone who reads AutoblogGreen, but I thought it was interesting to see them all gathered in one place:Tesla Motors (sports cars), Wrightspeed (sports cars and plug-in drivetrains for trucks), Fisker Automotive (electric sedans), Zap (low-speed and sports cars), Miles Automotive (low speed), Zenn Motors (low speed), AC Propulsion (retrofitting Scions for electric), Phoenix Motorcars (SUVs), Aptera (three-wheelers), Porteon (low speed electrics), Lightning (sports cars in England), Reva (economy cars), Ultramotor (electric trishaws), Myers Motors (freakish three-wheelers featured in Goldmember), Think (electric economy cars) and Venture Vehicles (three-wheeled electric cars.).I'd say the only "major" player that Kanellos missed is GEM, which has been making glorified golf carts for ages. Other contenders not on his list include Universal Electric Vehicle, American Electric Vehicle, G-Wiz and Hybrid Technologies. I'm sure there's at least a couple more we're missing, but we're already got over 20 small EV companies. Pretty soon, he figures, this list will be much easier to calculate: "History shows that most of these companies will be wiped out." So it goes, as my favorite author would write.

Venture Vehicles gets $6 Million in Venture Capital Venture Vehicles, the company working on the articulated three wheeled VentureOne vehicle, has just taken a big step toward financial sustainability for itself. They've received $6 million in Series A venture capital funding from NGEN Partners. Like Zap and Aptera Motors, Venture is taking the three wheeler route because it allows them to avoid the costly and time consuming process and engineering involved with automotive safety compliance. Anything with less than four wheels is considered a motorcycle and doesn't have to be crash tested or fitted with systems like airbags. All of that saves a lot of money and weight which is critical for electrically driven vehicles to maximize range.