Word: bike
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Iacocca launched EV Global in late 1996. Now EVG has 10 employees, support from Taiwan's Giant bicycle (which produces the E-Bike) and backing from private Swiss and Italian financiers ("Europe is our next stop," he says). Iacocca has also invested in Energy Conversion Devices, an innovative Detroit batterymaker run by former General Motors chairman Robert Stempel, and in Unique Mobility Inc., which designs some of the world's most advanced electric motors. "We're assembling all the people who want to be part of the electric-vehicle revolution," says Iacocca. "This is how you get it started...
...Bike has neither Mustang pizazz nor minivan practicality, but it sure will turn heads at the mall. Designed by an assemblage of talent, including Harald Belker, who gave Hollywood the Batmobile, the two-wheeler is a mountain bike with an ignition on the handlebars. Just turn the key, and it will carry you about 20 miles between charges (at any 110-volt outlet)--unless, that is, you're not too lazy to pedal, in which case it'll take you as far as you want to go. The sticker price...
...around the U.S. Retirement communities are an obvious target (he has spent some time playing golf at them lately). Small-town police departments in California already use electric bicycles, mostly made by ZAP Power Systems, a U.S. market leader. Later this year EVG plans to introduce a folding electric bike, which Iacocca figures is just the accessory for the life-style-conscious drivers of minivans and SUVs. "It's like the Trojan Horse," says the prince of promotion. "If I can get enough bikes into garages, then eventually kids are going to pressure the old man to make an electric...
Still, Iacocca's new venture faces a long, steep climb to success. The E-Bike is already nine months late to market (at an entrepreneurial burn rate of $150,000 a month) because of the technical difficulties in producing a finely tuned hybrid to Iacocca's exacting specifications. Instead of selling through bike dealers, EVG will peddle the E-Bike through auto dealers, where advertising budgets are gargantuan and Iacocca's credit impeccable...
Next week Iacocca will put his mouth where his money is, when he unveils the E-Bike at the National Auto Dealers Association convention in San Francisco. Whether EVG is another Mustang or another Edsel, friends say the effort has rejuvenated a man who told FORTUNE magazine he had "flunked retirement." Says Irene DiVito, a co-founder and vice president of EVG: "He's got his game back." And this is a man who only plays...