Fancy electric cars are hardly the first thing that comes to
mind when talking about Croatia. Ethnic wars of the 1990s or the booming
tourism on its pristine Adriatic coast are the far more common associations.
Yet a small Zagreb-based company, Dok-Ing, has won global recognition
with innovative high-tech products, like de-mining robots used by the
U.S.
army in
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
, and is now determined to get a foothold in the electric car market.
Barely seven months after the initial
idea, the company produced a funky, bright red prototype, called XD, and
displayed it at the Geneva Car Fair last month.
The small city car attracted considerable
interest. Dok-Ing is now perfecting it and trying to find investors willing to
foot the bill for mass production, preferably in
Croatia
.
"Ever since I was young I had this
idea, to produce a car. Now I realized we have the know-how and we did it. I
wasn't motivated by profit, it was more like a game, to prove I can actually do
it," Dok-Ing's owner Vjekoslav Majetic told Reuters.
The car holds three people and its
state-of-the-art batteries, spread along the chassis, give it enough power to
drive around town for several days without recharging.
"Driving at 50 km per hour, you can
cover 250 km (145 miles). Recharging it at home takes six to eight hours, but
we are also developing fast chargers which can do it in an hour," said
project manager Tomislav Bosko.
FUNDING KEY PROBLEM
The car's performance is quite
competitive, particularly the range. The initial costs are around 30,000 euros
($40,460), largely due to the expensive lithium-iron-phosphate batteries made
in
China
.
But once in mass production, the car
should cost less than 20,000 euros, which should make it quite attractive in
countries who are trying to encourage the use of green technology.
"For the car industry, which
generally does not produce such small electric cars, we are not competition. We
cannot compete in terms of quantity or financial resources," Majetic said.
Many major car manufacturers, like
Renault,
Toyota
and Ford, are developing their own electric models, believing that
hybrid or electric cars will dominate the market in 20-30 years.
"We stand a good chance now because
there are few producers of such small cars, but with every month we lose, the
chances for placing this on the global market are decreasing. Unless we define
everything by the end of the year, we've lost the project," Majetic said.
Starting any production-based business
in
Croatia
often proves challenging because of slow bureaucracy, high taxes and
labor costs and limited loan funding.
Initial financing may come from
Croatia
's
environment ministry, but Dok-Ing is more likely to set up a share-holding
company to raise funds, or allow a Croatian or foreign investor to take over.
Dok-Ing will decide after completing a
feasibility study in the next two months.
"If we don't find the money here, we
have no other option but to go abroad. This is not exactly my favorite idea,
but if there is no alternative, we'll opt for that," said Majetic, who has
already contacted some of the major car manufacturers.
(
from Reuters)