Until now, it has been impossible to become an automaker. In the past, Giant automakers had a lock on the technology, on distribution, and on the cost of entry was at least $1 billion.
Not any more. Advanced electric vehicle technology is available to anyone with a few tens of thousand of dollars. The Internet has changed how everything is being sold. And the new EV market is small enough and new manufacturing technology is proven enough to confidently enter the car business, and be profitable, on a fraction of what it used to take.
Tesla made electric cars cool. We at Myers EV aim to make them for <$18,000, profitably, and still cool. The aim is nothing less than accelerating the Green Car Revolution by coloring outside the lines.
Socially responsible people everywhere are looking to the mass adoption of electric cars to make this a cleaner, greener world. However, low gas prices and today’s paradigm for electric cars that has resulted in electric cars that cost more than people are willing to pay, turning what could be a Green Car Revolution into a slow evolutionary process.
By using a different paradigm, Myers EV aims to “create the impossible: an electric car that actually provides more value than its gas car competitor.” * It is this electric car, like the Model T before it, that will truly change the course of personal transportation, because it provides a compelling value proposition.
*Time magazine: Low Gas Prices are Stalling the Green Car Revolution. July 28, 2106.
How do we do make America’s First Profitable Electric Car that can be DRIVEN for FREE while reducing CO2 by 2/3rds (or eliminating it altogether)?
Hi, my name is Dana Myers, and over the last 12 years, I put together a team that built, sold, and serviced highway legal EVs, which team also developed “the lowest cost lithium battery (a Department of Energy manager had) ever seen.” Now, with Myers EV, I have put together a team of experienced and innovative automotive engineers to enable us to create America’s First Profitable Electric Car by cutting $950 million in car start-up costs, an EV so affordable you can DRIVE it for FREE.
(By way of background — I became CEO of an electric transfomer company thanks to my first intracompany start-up, a start-up that turned $250k into $40 million of profits and led to my receiving an Entrepreneur of the Year Award (even though it was a team effort). After leading up to 470 employees on 3 Continents for 15 years there, after the team in my second intra-company start-up remanufactured a 500,000 volt, 1.2 million pound electrical transformer, we attracted the buying attention of a Fortune 5 company. After the sale of that division, I left the company to pursue this disruptive EV opportunity.)
You might be wondering, “How is it possible to make America’s first profitable EV when other big companies haven’t been able to do it?” There are three big reasons why we’re able to do this:
Our vision starts with a man, Mike, standing on a bridge in LA about 18 years ago. He had an epiphany: he saw that the 4 or 5 lanes of traffic were filled with large vehicles transporting mostly just one person. “What a waste of real estate,” he thought. The cause of all this time-wasting congestion congestion.
So he did something about it. He built a 30 mile range three-wheel electric vehicle that sat just one person. He built 250 of these vehicles. We liked the idea so much, we bought his company’s assets and built another 50 more to learn the EV business. Now, you might wonder: “how would people use a one person vehicle that could only go 30 miles on a charge?” Glad you asked — you can see for yourself in the pictures and stories below:
Carpool Lane 4 Solo Drivers Mobile Bill Board Park Almost Anywhere
Hybrid Garage (100 mpg ave) Bold Colors MADE IN THE USA
Owners Loved These EVs (Single-Person Three-Wheel, 70 mph):
Betty bought her Myers Motors EV without a test drive, so she was delighted with how it handled. She said, “It has more zip on the highway than my Toyota pickup. It handles like a little sports car.” She also said, “I love being in the center of the cockpit. Getting back to my truck makes me feel like I’m in the wrong spot.” Betty expressed how fun driving her Myers Motors EV is, “It reminds me of how I felt when I was a kid and first got my license. Driving is fun again.”
Ron knows that the daily commutes are when drivers generate the most pollution. He never intended for his Myers Motors EV to replace his other car, but realized he could reduce the amount of pollution that he creates by driving it for single-passenger trips. Ron said that an additional bonus for him is the opportunity to “thumb my nose at the gas pumps.” He found that the trunk is a convenient size to carry home his groceries or other items from the store. Of course, he usually finds several people admiring his Myers Motors EV when he walks out to the mall parking lot.
Willie began driving his single person three-wheel EV to work about three times a week. Because it is easier to find parking for a small vehicle in a busy city like New York, he takes it for errands like banking or going to the hardware store or convenience store. Willie really enjoys coming up to the vehicle with his arms full of purchases because someone in the parking lot crowd will ask where he plans to put everything. Willie just smiles, clicks the remote control that he installed to open the trunk, and enjoys the looks on their faces as he stows his wares.
When asked about the cost, Paul said that buying the Myers Motors EV was well worth the money he spent. It requires very little maintenance, he enjoys driving it, and he likes avoiding gas stations. Paul also said, “I could spend four to eight times the amount of money for a high-end sports car and no one would take pictures of me or give me the reception they do when they see my Myers Motors EV.
“Because he was already exploring environmental and alternative energy issues for work, Phil was aware of the economic, political, and environmental problems associated with driving a gasoline-powered vehicle for every trip. He drives his single person EV for most of his daily driving and feels silly driving his one-ton diesel van to work. It stays parked at home unless he needs to transport more people or gear than can fit in his Myers Motors EV.
Jake’s commute used to take at least an hour, sometimes an hour and twenty minutes because of Seattle’s rainy weather. Driving the single person EV in the HOV lanes has cut his trip down to half an hour, giving him five extra hours a week. Now, Jake gets home in time for dinner, something very important to him. To Jake, driving his single person EV means the difference between sharing dinner with his children or missing out on family time.
What is the New Vision for Driving? How does it Work?
Mike’s team, and then Dana’s team, built an EV for the easiest and least expensive driving jobs, the light green segments of the pie charts below, driving jobs that only need a standard 110-volt outlet for charging. Actually, Mike’s electric vehicle, with a 30 mile range, only covered 50% of how far a car is driven in a day; Dana’s team upgraded to lithium batteries, creating a 60 mile range, which allowed this three-wheel vehicle to cover 80% of all car driving in terms of range.
Of course, an electric car built for the light green areas doesn’t do 100% of all driving jobs and won’t work if households only have one car. But, for multi-car families, using an electric car as a 2nd or 3rd family car does work. Fortunately for the Green Car Revolution in the U.S., there are 66 million households that own two or more cars.
The fact that the majority of households own two or more cars means we can look at electric cars like we already look at other types of vehicles. That is, people already buy specific vehicles to solve their specific problems:
Need to haul stuff? People buy a pickup.
Have a lot of kids? People buy a minivan.
Short trips around town? People buy a smaller, fuel-efficient car.
Of course, not many people actually buy a smaller fuel efficient car. That’s because we’ve been conditioned to use cars that can carry 4-5 people… even though most (87%) of our daily trips are driven alone or with just one other person.
With so many (66 million) multi-car households, driving 5 person cars for 1 and 2 person jobs is like having a 5 seat bicycle and powering it by just one person. That would be absurd! The legs and lungs of the average person wouldn’t last a mile. Yet, that is what we are doing with our cars
We’ve also been conditioned to use cars that can travel 350+ miles on a single tank. … even though we probably don’t drive that many miles in a single day more than once or twice a year, if that much. In fact, 87% of all car driving is less than 75 miles per day.
What it comes down to is this: We’re buying “excess” car and using “extra” resources every single day… just in case we need to carry extra passengers or drive 350+ miles in a day… even though these scenarios are exceedingly rare.
Robert Riley pointed the way to the Green Car Revoution when he wrote:
“Overweight and oversize cars and chronic underutilization of vehicles are the two most wasteful habits affecting the world’s consumption of transportation energy, of which about 95 percent comes from petroleum. Using vehicles that fit driving patterns would greatly improve vehicle utilization and significantly reduce the energy intensity of personal transportation.” (Alternative Cars in the 21st Century, p. 45)
The New Vision for 21st Century Mobility is Electric Cars built to Fit how we do most of our driving most (87%) of the time.
By trying to make EV technology do more than it is capable of doing, that is, by electrifying that last 13% of driving, we find out what Tesla and everyone else has found out …
This problem is not unique to Tesla. It affects every company that currently manufactures an Electric Vehicle (EV).
And the list goes on…
So, why does any company make unprofitable cash-sucking EVs at all?
California’s Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate
California has a goal. They want 15% of all vehicles on the road to be Zero-Emission Vehicles (ZEV) by the year 2025.
To meet this goal, California requires car manufacturers to sell a certain percentage of ZEVs every year. Carmakers then earn “credits” for these ZEVs.
The penalty for not complying with the ZEV mandate? Simple. You can no longer sell cars in California.
Since California is the largest car market in the U.S., and since 16 other States have adopted this California regulation for themselves, all major carmakers are complying with the mandate. This is why they make unprofitable EVs — to “earn” the right to sell gas-powered cars in California and those other States.
Why Are EVs So Unprofitable to Make?
Carmakers are trying to build their EVs such that they can do all the things a regular gas-powered car can do.
Carmakers are stuck in the current paradigm. They want to take a gas-powered car, replace its gas engine “guts” with an electric engine … and get the same results for the same cost.
And that’s the problem.
At this stage, EVs simply cannot be 1:1 replacements of gas-powered cars. To even attempt to make EVs 1:1 equivalents of gas-powered cars means high prices that average families cannot afford.
This is a big reason why the “Green Car Revolution” has stalled. It’s also why the current share of EVs on California roads has been stuck at 3% since 2014.
How to Reignite EV Sales and Profit from Them:
EVs are extremely price sensitive
So far, most mainstream EVs are priced around $30,000. At that price, gas-powered cars still represent a better value, so only the most committed “green” consumers buy EVs.
Just how price sensitive are EVs?
In 2015, Tesla sold 50,000 electric cars — but when they dropped the price from $100K down to $35K, they got 276,000 orders in just 48 hours. (As of this writing, they now claim 373,000 pre-orders for the Tesla Model 3.)
This means there is a huge market for a truly affordable electric car …
Lowering the price of a Tesla to $35K created a 550% jump in sales.
This validates what all the surveys have been showing… that there is a massive amount of pent-up market demand for EVs that will be unleashed as prices go down.
So, if a good quality 4-wheeled EV could be manufactured and sold for half again what Tesla’s Model 3 costs, about $18,000 after tax rebates and we would quickly be on the path to mass-market adoption and possibly hundreds of thousands of cars sold and put the Green Car Revolution into high gear.
Our new vision for building electric cars that fit how people drive is the first of three point for how we can make America’a First Electric Car that people can DRIVE for FREE. The second point is the electric vehicle we are aiming to make.
By not trying to do everything, our purpose-built car solves — or has the potential to solve — 21st Century personal transportation problems of pollution, true affordability AND profitability. Highlight specifications of the electric car we are aiming to build are presented below:
Purchase Price $17,995 (after federal tax credit)
Seating Front — 50% more side-to-side space than average
Back — Jump seat for kids and small adults
Range 75 miles – Fits 87% of car driving jobs
Top Speed 75 – 80 mph
0 to 60 10 seconds (instant torque is a big “fun” factor)
Efficiency 165 mpg-equivalent (70% better than a Tesla)
Fuel Cost $24 for 1,000 miles of driving
Charging Standard 110 volt outlets; fast charging optional
Charge Time Conveniently charges while you are sleeping or working,
Fast Charge Fast charging is available as an option – 80% in < 3 hours
Battery Lithium
Options AC; $19,995 (after $7,500 tax credit); color
Pricing Model Fixed, no haggle, pricing.
Colors Bold and Bright – for fun and for safety
Cargo Holds a full cart of groceries; set of golf clubs
In order to bring this DRIVE for FREE electric car to market, we have to build it in such a way that investors will invest to get it built. To do that, we need a clear path to profitability, which, in our case, comes by way of extreme capital efficiency.
The traditional high-volume car manufacturing plant is $1 BILLION. To break even on this massive investment, traditional carmakers have to sell at least 100,000 of a single model car.
Do you know how many EVs were sold in the U.S. in 2016? Total EV sales were 154,843 cars – with 31 different car models by 12 or 13 different manufacturers (http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/). This averages out to 4,994 cars sold per model – about 95,000 cars per model short of what is needed to get to profitabilty. Clearly, these numbers don’t even come close to supporting a traditional $1 billion car factory, let alone a national dealership network.
However, by sizing our production capacity to fit today’s EV market, and by putting together the team and technology that enables us to cut at least $950 million out of the traditional start-up costs, we have found the low capital cost key that allows us to open the door to profitably getting into the electric car business so that we can solve the high cost of elecric cars problem.
We built our three-wheel vehicles in a micro-factory, so we know how capital efficient it can be. As for this electric car, the extreme capital efficiency of our manufacturing process enables us to use the micro-factory approach as well. The beauty of builiding in small (up to 10,000 per micro-factory) micro-factories is that they can be located anywhere there is a market for electric cars, whether that is a large city in the U.S. or elsewhere around the world. Local micro-factories allow us to create local green jobs and be closer to our customers.
The reasons are simple:
Major car manufacturers haven’t built the kind of electric car we are aiming to build because they don’t think about the EV market the way we are thinking about it.
While automakers asked “how can we make electric cars that act like the gas cars we’ve been making for the last 100 years?” — we asked a totally different question. We asked ourselves “what driving jobs could today’s EV technology be used to do more cost-effectively than gas cars?” Ask a different question and you get a different answer, in this case, an answer that allows us to do what the automakers are not doing — creating a truly affordable, profitable, electric car.
Another reason automakers aren’t already doing what we’re doing is because they don’t want to cannibalize their own sales. They’re already selling hundreds of thousands of gas-powered cars every single year and making a fine profit. Why would they want to sell loss-leading EVs at the expense of their lucrative gas-powered car business?
Answer: They don’t really want to build electric cars. They are building them primarily to meet California’s demands. What they really want to build are high-margin pick-ups and SUVs, because that is what ultimately drives their profits – not money-losing EVs.
It really is that simple.
The pent-up demand for electric cars is huge … there are 66 million multi-car households and 21% of drivers want to drive electric but are still buying gas cars because today’s electric cars cost too much: that almost 14 million familes. The only thing holding them back is the market’s lack of an electric car with compelling economics.
It’s going to take a nimble startup like Myers EV to create it because today’s approaches are not getting it done. All the EVs in this space currently fall into one of three categories:
Category #1: Major carmakers who produce EVs at a loss so they can keep selling gas-powered cars in California. (A category we’ve already covered in depth.)
Category #2: Tesla. Makes cutting edge EVs that seek to do everything gas powered cars can do and more. In spite of charging premium prices, Tesla still loses money on every car it sells.
Category #3: Small start-ups that are currently making 3-wheeled electric vehicles to avoid compliance with safety regulations.
We’ve already shown the shortcomings of the first two categories. The biggest shortcoming is, of course, that they haven’t yet figured out how to manufacture an EV at a profit (because they are building EVs for the highest cost driving jobs to electrify).
But what about this third category? What about the new EV start-ups that are producing 3-wheeled electric vehicles?
We’ve already been there and done that. (see the next section)
You know what we discovered from that three-wheel vehicle experience?
Even though they are easier to produce, we do not want to be in the business of selling 3-wheeled EVs. Here’s why…
Three-wheeled vehicles perform very poorly in bad weather conditions. If the single wheel is in the rear (as it was on our 3-wheeled EV), the rear wheel slips all over the place in snowy weather. It’s hard to generate forward momentum. It’s also hard to stop the car from fishtailing.
So: Three-wheeled cars are harder to control in bad weather (even rain) and more likely to get into an accident.
More to the point, 3-wheeled cars are considered “motorcycles.” They don’t have to comply with government safety regulations and are therefore not as safe as their 4-wheeled counterparts.
If a 3-wheeled EV is more likely to get into accident in bad weather conditions… and does not have the same safety features as a 4-wheeled vehicle… what does that mean?
It means your risk of getting into an accident is higher. If you do get into an accident, your risk of injury is higher also.
Safety is the #1 reason why we abandoned our 3-wheeled EV. For EVs to reach the mass market, they need to be as safe as regular cars. That’s why we are now bringing our 4-wheeled EV to market.
Let’s sum up:
This EV is the ideal 2nd or 3rd family vehicle for the 66 million multi-car households, enabling them to handle up to 87% of their driving jobs with No More Gas.
This EV will comply with all U.S. car safety regulations.
This EV is “an electric car that actually provides more value than its gas-car competitor”
These are the reasons this EV, the Myers EV, is positioned to easily hit and surpass our low breakeven mark and DOMINATE the new age of clean, green transportation.
What does America’s First Profitable Electric Car look like? What will an electric car that saves more money than it costs to buy and drive look like? It will look something like this …
Our competition isn’t the other 31 other models of electric cars, or a handful of three-wheel vehicles, or low speed vehicles (like Twizy at 25 mph or the iRoad at 35 mph). Our competition is gas cars and inertia. More on this in the business plan.
DRIVE FOR FREE: An electric car that saves more money than it costs to own and drive (for 100,000 miles). The total simple cost of owning and driving a Myers EV for 100,000 miles is $23,257 less than owning and driving the average gas car for 100,000 miles:
Note that Donald Trump has indicated that he will not revoke the 200,000 tax credits per EV manufacturer.
Get an Extra $4,000 of Value: Drive Solo in the HOV / Carpool Lanes
9 out of 10 people commute solo — that is, by themselves. Carpool lanes in most big cities typically allow solo drivers of electric cars to save time by driving in the faster moving carpool lanes, thus saving their drivers up to 60 minutes per day of drive time. Studies have shown that consumers place an average $4,000 value on a car that saves them time in the faster carpool lanes.
We are intentionally not an all-purpose car We are a high-quality electric alternative for commutes and around-town driving, and not meant to replace the family car – which is why we don’t compete directly with other gas cars or other EVs. We are not a date night car — but the uniqueness of our vehicle is a great conversation starter that might lead to a date. In any case, we’re aiming to build a zippy, high quality electric car for the short distance, low-occupancy trips that characterize how most people use their cars most of the time (about 87% of the time, to be more specific).
Ease of charging
After high price, one of the biggest speed bumps in the EV industry is lack of fast charging infrastructure. To adequately charge the bigger, heavier EVs currently in the market, would require nearly 1,000,000 powerful chargingstations; today, there are less than 40,000. Our vehicle use pattern is such that our car can be conveniently charged from any of the 100’s of millions of existingelectric outlets while it is not being driven (whether that is at night while its owner is sleeping or during the day at work while its owner is working).
Driving CO2 Free
Our purpose built electric car is also the least expensive way to drive CO2 free — and still save about $16,000 over the cost of buying and driving the average gas car.
We Solve the Number 1 and 2 Obstacles standing in the way of the Green Car Revolution Up-front purchase cost is the number one reason people don’t buy electric cars. The Number 2 reason people don’t buy electric cars is range. By building an electric car designed to be used as a 2nd or 3rd car for the 66 million multi-car families, we create an EV for the 21% of people already predispoed to buying an electric car have an electric car because we have resolved their #1 and #2 reasons not to buy while making a compelling financial case for purchasing our EV.
Two Big Reasons
1. You’ll be accelerating the green car revolution: this is the electric car that can help EVs “cross the chasm” from early adopters to the mass market. The people who want to change the world by weaning it off gasoline already exist — they just need a product that affordably and practically allows them to drive electric.
2. You will have to read our business plan for the second reason.
So, if you are interested in cutting down carbon emissions and protecting our planet, then this is the fastest way to the goal of displacing gas-powered cars, which emit 19 pounds of carbon for every gallon of gas they burn. And if you get the business plan you will find out the other reason to get involved.
In 1908, 125 companies were building the new technology of self-propelled “auto mobiles.” They were sold primarily to the wealthiest citizens of their day. One man wanted to “democratize” personal transportation by creating a car that was “practical and affordable to the common man.” His name was Henry Ford – 13 people financially backed him to get him started — and he changed the world by increasing the QUANTITY of cars on the road to where now in the U.S. there are more cars than registered drivers.
Interestingly, Henry Ford’s solution, as is ours, was not derived from consumer requests. As he famously put it, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said, ‘A faster horse.'”
Every automaker is today building electric cars. Today’s electric cars are primarily being sold to the wealthiest citizens of our day. We have the technology, the team, and the vision to “democratize” personal transportation to create an electric car that is “practical and affordable to the common man” and woman of this 21st Century. You have the opportunity to change the world by increasing the QUALITY of our personal transportation system by reducing the cost of electric vehicles so that everyday people like you and I can electrify most of our driving.
As the below Gartner Technology Hype curve shows, we haven’t missed the EV Revolution, we are just entering at the first possible moment to make a profit. Tesla and all the other automakers have created the market acceptance for electric cars, paving the way our electric car that solves the cost and range problems in a way that, we believe, will truly accelerate the Green Car Revolution.
If you want to learn more about our business, then click the “business plan” button.
Clicking the “business plan” button does not obligate you to anything whatsoever. It’s merely a way of expressing your potential interest to learn more about what we’re doing.
Once we receive your information, we’ll get in touch to schedule a time to talk and / or give you access to the business plan.