News

ZAP Bids for Ford's TH!NK Electric Car Unit

November 05, 2002 by Jeff Shepard

ZAP (Sebastopol, CA), a maker of electric bikes and scooters, announced that it has made a $10.0 million offer to buy Ford Motor Co.'s (Dearborn, MI) Think electric vehicle division, which Ford scrapped this year due to poor demand. ZAP, through its subsidiary Voltage Vehicles, has offered up to $10.0 million in cash, stock and warrants to purchase all of Ford's electric vehicle assets, including the Think City car program.

Ford paid $23.0 million in 1999 for electric vehicle company Pivco Industries (Norway), renaming it Think or TH!NK, and has since invested $100.0 million in the technology in response to environmental regulations on fuel economy and emissions. In August 2002, however, Ford announced it was pulling the plug on the Think program, stating that disappointing sales and lack of government support for electric vehicle programs had reduced its viability in the mass market.

"ZAP's prime business is the high technology - the electric vehicle transportation business - that is our only business," stated ZAP Chairman Gary Starr. "There is demand for electric vehicles, but it doesn't seem that the conventional auto makers are making them available for sale. That is ZAP's mission."