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Originally published on 06/20/2002
Patriots don't buy SUVs. General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, said this in a speech I heard him give a few months ago. He made a direct connection between the United States' current situation and the amount of oil we consume.
Fast Facts:
Hypercar
www.hypercar.com |
| CEO |
John Fox-Rubin
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| HQ |
Basalt, CO
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| Founded |
September 1998
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| Employees |
10
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| Market |
Intellectual property and engineering services for automobile industry
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| Funding |
$7M+ of private funding (no VC). Currently raising $16M.
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| Profitable? |
Projected in two years after funding round closes.
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Drivers have been sold into a freeway arms race of size, weight, and power, and the automobile industry has become remarkably efficient at churning out what are essentially bigger and more refined implementations of a machine-age architecture that hasn't changed substantially in at least 50 years. To top it off, despite incredible advances in engineering, average new-vehicle fuel economy is the worst it's been in 20 years.
Yet modern technologies would allow us to build the cars people want without material excess and high fuel consumption. The time is thus right to rethink the fundamental architecture of the automobile. At least, so says David Taggart, the CTO of Hypercar, a startup that is designing a suite of automobile technologies based on a clean-sheet vision of the car, as opposed to tweaking existing technologies. David learned this high-risk design philosophy when he was at Lockheed Skunk Works.
The core technologies of the Hypercar are propulsion (fuel cells, for lower emissions), body structure (composite materials, for strength and weight reduction), and control (a drive-by-wire system, for simplicity). But Hypercar is no DeLorean; the company won't build a car with all these technologies in it. Instead, it will sell its engineering to existing automobile companies. The model is not unusual: Porsche, Lotus, and other companies have substantial engineering-for-hire services.
Hypercar is ultimately betting that consumers want a truly modern car, that they will say this with dollars and through politics, and that the auto manufactures will appreciate Hypercar's fresh approach. It's a long bet, but an important one.
- Rafe Needleman
email: rafe-needleman@catchoday.com
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