The Toronto-based company can finally start selling its electric low speed vehicles in its home country.
Toronto, Ontario's Zenn Motor (TSX: ZNN) has been selling its electric low speed vehicles since late 2006, but it's had to go south of the border to do so.
That's about to change, as the company just received approval from Transport Canada.
"It frees the way to sales in Canada, but now we have to deal with each province. It's not a cakewalk by any means," Ian Clifford, CEO of Zenn Motor, told Cleantech.com while on business in Texas.
Clifford is in the Lone Star State to meet with secretive energy storage developer EEStor, based in an Austin suburb. Zenn holds 3.8 percent of EEStor after investing $2.5 million in the supercapacitor company in April.
Zenn's car now meets Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, but it's left up to the individual provinces to decide whether to approve the use of the car on public roads, and British Columbia is currently the only province that allows the use of low speed vehicles, or LSVs.
LSVs are limited to operating on roads with speed limits of up to 35 miles per hour, and the cars can't have a top speed of more than 25 mph.
The Zenn, or zero emission, no noise, vehicle is a three door hatchback with a range of up to 35 miles and an 80 percent recharge time of 4 hours.
Take a look at a couple of the cars here >>
The company makes five or six cars a day at its factory in St. Jerome, Quebec, but Clifford said they've got the capacity for "thousands and thousands" of vehicles at the plant.
Dynasty Electric Cars, a Delta, British Columbia-based electric LSV maker, recently decided to move its operations overseas, leaving Zenn Motor as the only company building electric LSVs in the country.
Clifford said he has no plans to move, but he had almost given up on selling to the Canadian market.
"They were insisting that we had to basically certify that we would not offer our vehicles for sale on mixed use roadways, which is completely contrary to the way the legislation is written," said Clifford.
Transport Canada issued its approval for Zenn's use of a National Safety Mark even though Zenn plans to market the car for use on local roads. But the agency said it plans to inform the provinces that it does not believe that LSVs should mix with regular vehicles, citing safety issues.
"They're not certified to meet any safety standard that other cars are certified to meet, the crash-worthiness and component testing," said Transport Canada spokeswoman Jessie Chauhan.
She said the reason the Zenn was not previously approved was because the company's micro-car platform, imported from France, did not meet Canadian safety standards.
"We sent the company a letter on April 11, 2007, indicating which items the micro-car platform had to be stripped of," said Chauhan. She said the agency received written confirmation from the company last week that it would comply with the platform safety concerns.
The Zenn is already used on local roads in the U.S., where LSVs are approved for use on low speed public roads in 43 states, including New York, Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts, Washington and California.
"Everything from somebody living in a controlled, gated community, to somebody living in a downtown, urban core, to someone living in a town, to someone living on an island using the vehicles," said Clifford.
He said the company expects to start selling its cars in Mexico in early 2008, and that it's in talks about the possibility of European sales.
Zenn also plans to offer vehicle conversions, swapping out combustion engines for electric, as part of its licensing deal with EEStor.
Zenn holds worldwide exclusive licenses for EEStor's supercapacitor for used car conversions as well as for new small and medium-sized low speed and highway capable vehicles.
The EEStor supercapacitor cells are said to use barium titanate coated with aluminum oxide and glass to achieve a level of energy capacitance claimed to be much higher than what is currently available in the market.
If the technology works as suggested, about $9 of electricity—delivered by trickle charge at home, or in five minutes by specialized equipment—could give the capacitor sufficient energy to drive a small car like the Zenn 500 miles, or 800 kilometers.
"The Achilles' heel of the electric vehicle industry is clearly about energy storage. It's not about drive systems, it's not about vehicles, it's about the ability to store adequate amounts of energy safely and cost effectively in a vehicle platform," said Clifford.
Zenn has an option to put up to an additional $5 million into EEStor if it meets testing milestones, which are to measure how much energy can be stored in the EEStor production materials.
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I had not heard of the ZENN before today. A friend told me about it and I had to check it out on the web. It looks fabulous! My wife and I have a Toyota Camry Hybrid and are somewhat satisfied with it. The car is terrific, but we still have to fill up the gas tank! I am going to lobby my MPP and my MP here in Toronto to get the road regulations changed so that we might be able to buy one of your cars and use it. Keep up the great work. As soon as we are able to buy your car, I will install solar panels or a windmill to help keep the charge. Heck, I am already working on these ideas.
Paul Gillingham