Here’s Malcolm Bricklin’s new plans for his Visionary Vehicles brand. Hybrid cars, made in China for real cheap. Bricklin’s previous plans with Chery to bring in Chery vehicles into the US under the Visionary Vehicles name collapsed when the two parties did not manage to agree on how to use the money financed by investors.
He is currently in talks with 15 different Chinese car companies to try and get a hybrid car designed and built, then shipped to the US to sell under the Visionary Vehicles brand. Bricklin says the car will be a hybrid car, which means it has both a combustion engine and an electric motor, but the car will run primarily on the electric motor, with the combustion engine being a really small unit only running constantly at a certain RPM to recharge the electric motor’s batteries. The car can also be recharged by plugging it in to a regular wall socket. Fuel economy is estimated to be about 100 to 150 mpg, which translates to about 42 to 63 km per 1 litre of fuel!
Malcolm Bricklin says he hopes to have everything finished and set to go into the showrooms by 2009, and a prototype would be ready within 6 months. The car would be the size of a Mercedes Benz E-class, and could cost between US$10,000 to US$25,000. Tesla Motors, which stunned everyone a few months ago with it’s Tesla Roadster, is also developing a similiar vehicle, a hybrid sedan the size of the E-class/5-series.
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After dabbling for years in the IT industry, Paul Tan initially began this site as a general blog covering various topics of personal interest. With an increasing number of readers paying rapt attention to the motoring stories, one thing led to another and the rest, as they say, is history. An avid electronic gadget aficionado as well as big-time coffee lover, he's also the executive producer of the Driven motoring TV programme.
tree-huggers, rejoice!
Idea accepted. With the hike of petrol, this the time to use alternative ways. Make the practical use, saloon size, reasonable price and good design car as well with this hybrid technology. I'm sure that i'm not the only one who want a car with respective fuel consumption. Go electric motor, go! Time to change to "TNB fuel."
On the move,sir..
Thats the way to go….self recharged vehicle…SRV….only use fossil fuel during start up..
self recharged vehicle….good idea..Chinese car technology can even run on H2O