Some Feel Good news
I’ll write more as details emerged, but it appears that Toronto-based Feel Good Cars is making headway with its low-speed electric vehicle known as ZENN — which stands for Zero Emission, No Noise.
On top of upgrading the design of the ZENN, they’re aggressively signing up U.S. dealerships, are meeting with potential investors and even have plans to go public in early 2006 on the Toronto Stock Exchange — Venture Exchange.
I wrote about the ZENN in April, at which time Feel Good Cars founder and CEO Ian Clifford was trying to raise enough money to transition from prototype to commercial manufacturing. It appears this took a little longer than he expected, as initial delivery of the ZENN to dealerships was supposed to start in September. But alas, momentum and confidence seems to be building again. They’ve even hired a PR agency, signalling that the days of operating in stealth are over and that they’re ready to aggressively promote the product.
Too bad Ontarians won’t be able to enjoy the ZENN, no thanks to outdated legislation that forbids low-speed vehicles on even the slowest of roads. I’m hearing that the province may be open to doing some LSV pilots, but so far the government’s approach to the issue has been pathetic. Ontarians should be outraged at the closed-mindedness at the Ministry of Transportation.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
