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...American garages," he says. "I think I have one vision left in me before I die, and it's electric." Fine, but a bicycle in the land of muscle cars? Definitely. Iacocca's EV Global Motors (as in, Electric Vehicle) plans to start distributing the Taiwan-produced E-Bike in February. His sales target for this year is an astonishing 1,000 bikes a week, a goal skeptics say is far too ambitious. "Can Iacocca go from zero to 50,000 in sales in one year?" asks Ed Benjamin, a bike-industry analyst. "Most Americans haven't got a clue...
...Asia and Europe, where noisy, gas-powered scooters are fast being outlawed, electric bicycle markets are exploding. Analysts like retired GM engineer Frank Jamerson expect even the minuscule U.S. market, led by enviroconscious California, to double this year, as it did in 1998, to a total of 30,000 bikes sold. "How deep is the market?" asks Iacocca rhetorically. "Why does a girl need a 4WD sport-utility vehicle in Beverly Hills? The electric bike is a life-style thing--and we'll get a lot of interest out there if we play this right...
Since leaving Detroit, Iacocca has fooled with an eclectic array of proposals, even serving a brief stint as chairman of Koo Koo Roo Chicken, the health-conscious fast-food chain. He turned down an early invitation to team up with inventor Malcolm Bricklin's electric-bike company. Yet Iacocca has been intrigued by electric propulsion since his early days at Ford, 50 years ago. "Thomas Edison promised Henry Ford he would be able to throw away the internal-combustion engine," he says. "It's 100 years later, and we're just now seeing some progress...
...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...
...student's bike slid on the slippery roads and he fell...