At stream gasoline prices, replacing the family sedan with a hybrid car doesnt have a lot of mercantile clarity for majority people. Assuming that the cost per gallon hovers at $3, you would have to expostulate 148,000 miles to have up the $6,000 some-more you"ll compensate for a Toyota ( TM - news - people ) Prius removing 45mpg contra a Toyota Corolla at 28mpg. (See "Backseat Driver")But what about cars that expostulate 100,000 miles a year and get 14mpg? There exists such a market: the taxis, limos, vans and convey buses of America. Fleet owners outlay $62 billion a year on shopping new vehicles, and a immature association in Detroit, called Alte, wants a cut of it. fdcWincolComputeStyle(); fdcWincolComputeListpos("feature_with_art");var alertsList = { "alerts":[{"type":"tickers","key":"TM","value":"Toyota"},{"type":"tickers","key":"F","value":"Ford Motor"},{"type":"tickers","key":"ETN","value":"Eaton Corp."},{"type":"tickers","key":"NSANY","value":"Nissan"},{"type":"keywords","key":"Tesla","value":"Tesla"},{"type":"keywords","key":"hybrid","value":"hybrid"},{"type":"keywords","key":"Chrysler","value":"Chrysler"},{"type":"keywords","key":"Alt-e","value":"Alt-e"}]}; firstHTML(); OAS_AD("BigBanner"); secondHTML(); OAS_AD(centBan); thirdHTML(); showHMenu(fdcchannel); OAS_AD("StoryLogo"); Entrepreneurs One Energy Startups Tireless Quest For Capital Christopher Steiner, 12.10.09, 05:00 PM EST Forbes Magazine antiquated Dec 28, 2009Alte wants to hang hybrid expostulate trains in clunker taxis. It wants your taxation income to assistance out. Eyes on the prize: Chief Executive John Thomas shows off his hybrid energy train. At stream gasoline prices, replacing the family sedan with a hybrid car doesnt have a lot of mercantile clarity for majority people. Assuming that the cost per gallon hovers at $3, you would have to expostulate 148,000 miles to have up the $6,000 some-more you"ll compensate for a Toyota ( TM - news - people ) Prius removing 45mpg contra a Toyota Corolla at 28mpg. (See "Backseat Driver")But what about cars that expostulate 100,000 miles a year and get 14mpg? There exists such a market: the taxis, limos, vans and convey buses of America. Fleet owners outlay $62 billion a year on shopping new vehicles, and a immature association in Detroit, called Alte, wants a cut of it.emailprintreprintnewslettercommentssharedel.icio.usDigg It!yahooFacebookTwitterRedditrssforbes:http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1228/entrepreneurs-alte-hybrid-trains-taxis-plug-needed.html?partner=yahoobuzzAlte doesnt aim to have total vehicles. It wants to retrofit existent fleets with hybrid energy trains. Most hybrids, identical to the Prius, have dual expostulate trains--one incited by battery power, the alternative by a gasoline engine. Altes pattern (similar to that of the expected Chevy Volt) involves a singular missile spun by a computer-controlled, battery-powered electric engine charged from a wall socket; a small gasoline engine powers a generator of electric energy when needed. That proceed saves parts, weight and fuel, though not sufficient to clear the cost unless you gnaw up the miles. Hence the fleet-market attack.Chief Executive John Thomas, a 47-year-old automatic operative and former head of the Michigan sedan module at electric-car builder Tesla, is expanded about Altes potential. Consider, he says, the 13,500 sedan cabs in New York City, and an additional 30,000 clothing vehicles, often Lincoln Town Cars. "We wish to reinstate the expostulate trains of each one of them," he declares. Retrofitting usually a small fragment of the finish U.S. swift inventory--including convey buses, blurb vans, limousines, military cars and post bureau trucks--could beget $2 billion in annual income by 2013. Then theres the tellurian market: Thomas has met with the Moroccan supervision about converting that countrys 100,000 taxis. Hes additionally salivating over a Spanish charge to have 1 million of the countrys cars using hybrid or electric-drive trains by 2014.Initially Alte plans to sell the drive-train kits by 100 car dealerships that would compensate a one-time $200,000 price for protected Alte territories. Dealers would bombard out an additional $300,000 for specialized electrical contrast apparatus and alternative collection (sold by an additional manufacturer) to perform the conversions. Offsetting those outlays would be the $25,000 per acclimatisation paid by swift operators. At 900 conversions a year, each requiring about thirteen hours of technician labor, Thomas reckons, a dealership with at slightest 4 use bays would bag $1,400 to $2,000 in pretax distinction per vehicle.Altes leaders embody cofounders W. Jeff DeFrank and Nam Thai-Tang. Both men came from the engineering ranks at Tesla and, prior to that, Ford Motor ( F - news - people ), where Thai-Tang logged nineteen years. DeFrank additionally worked on arch reactors for the Navy. Chief Financial Officer Roy S. Clauss outlayed thirty years as an investment landowner on Wall Street. Early this month ex-Chrysler arch senior manager Thomas LaSorda sealed on as an financier and house piece of (he wouldnt divulge the distance of his stake). Says LaSorda: "I think the plan here will attain since they"re not going after markets that the big car companies target.",,forbes/2009/1228/entrepreneurs-alte-hybrid-trains-taxis-plug-needed.htmlJust one problem: miss of startup juice. Thomas says he needs $130 million to get the production of kits proposed at a bureau once used by Delphi ( DPHI.PK - news - people ) in Auburn Hills, Mich. Alte can get there in scarcely one fell swoop by bagging a $101 million sovereign loan, piece of the of the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program sponsored by the Department of Energy, that so far has betrothed $5.9 billion to Ford to retool factories for fuel-efficient cars; $1.6 billion to Nissan ( NSANY - news - people ) to set up electric cars in Tennessee; $465 million to Tesla to finish the bureau for the $57,000 sedan; and $530 million for Fisker Automotive to set up plug-in variety in Delaware. To even be deliberate for the loan, Thomas and association have to lift $30 million in equity. Since rising last December, Alte has managed to lift usually $4 million from angels, with an additional $5 million on lane from identical sources.The tough query for collateral began with the gathering of a single-spaced 60-page loan application, that the supervision deserted in January, job it "substantially incomplete." Little warn since that Alte had small money and no production capacity. Says Thomas: "The loan focus routine has been incredibly complicated, but we knew that from the experience at Tesla."Thomas and Clauss afterwards scrounged for mix at dozens of angel networks and investment conferences, profitable up to $7,500 to suggest a ten-minute display in front of try collateral and in isolation equity firms. No fitness there, either: Investors smitten of clouded cover computing and new consumer gadgets yawned at a car thought that on the face wasnt as voluptuous as Tesla"s. In May Thomas came opposite a buck accede to that betrothed to compare the cost of collateral outlays for new fuel-efficiency schemes. That offer took an additional excited week. Again, the supervision refused. "You cant go after each glossy intent you see," says Thomas.Meanwhile, Thai-Tang and DeFrank went to work on a prototype. In June, after spending 3 months and $125,000, Alte denounced the initial energy sight inside the bombard of a yellow Ford Crown Victoria taxicab. A couple of angels bit, but Thomas still had a prolonged approach to go.Back to the doe--this time, with 140 pages in hand, together with a new franchise on that Michigan bureau and $1 million in angel funding. In Aug the buck spoken Altes acquiescence "sufficient" for serve consideration. Next step: an environmental review. No sweat, says Thomas. Alte estimates that a new hybrid car, from the make to the death, creates 96 tons of CO dioxide, whilst a plug-in energy sight acclimatisation kicks off usually a entertain of that over the lifetime. Thats not just a more aged of apples to apples, but supervision bureaucrats competence be wowed by it.Altes ultimate prototype--a $250,000 investment that helped captivate LaSorda--is a rolling framework that runs Altes customary expostulate train, with all the operative tools exposed. Eight engineers worked 16-hour days for dual months to set up it. The summary here: Altes complement is all stretchable and can be commissioned in anything from a bmw 7-Series to a Chevy Caprice. In Nov Thomas sent the rolling framework to a sustainable-energy discussion in New York City, where it held the eye of swift operators at Frito-Lay and at the citys Police and Parks departments.As Alte inches closer to capital, competitors are stirring. Azure Dynamics, a small association in Detroit, has sole a little hybrid drives for medium-duty smoothness vans. Raser Technologies in Provo, Utah has finished a Hummer retrofit that, it claims, yields 100mpg. Eaton Corp. ( ETN - news - people ) has retrofitted 100 FedEx ( FDX - news - people ) trucks with fuel-friendly expostulate trains, though the acclimatisation costs are still prohibitive.Altes angel appropriation should keep the lights on for the subsequent year. As for the equity collateral indispensable to land that big buck loan, Thomas is counting on LaSorda to lift his weight with dealers and remonstrate them to put up the superfluous $20 million. "We cant wait for perpetually on the funding," he says.table.fundTab {width: 170px; border-collapse: collapse;border:1px plain 85a44b;margin:5px 0px;padding:0px;}td.headerRow {background: #c3e0d5; font-family: arial; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align:bottom;}td.headerRow1 {background: #c3e0d5; font-family: arial; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align:bottom;}img.bSqr {position:relative;top:-3px;padding-right:2px;}td.rowColor1 {background: #006400; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; color: #fff;}td.rowColor2 {background: #d3300a; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; color: #fff;}td.rowColor {background: #b0ce79; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);}td.rowColor3 {background: #8fc6b4; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);}td.rowColor4 {background: #8fc6b4; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);}td.rowColor5 {background: #7a9c41; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; color: #fff;}td.ltf {text-align: left;}td.cnt {text-align: center;}td.pad {padding-right:8px;}div.footnte {font-family: arial; font-size: 10px;}h4.subheaderRow {font-family: arial; font-size: 20px; font-weight: bold; }Massive MarketRetrofitting even a small fragment of all swift vehicles with hybrid energy trains could beget billions in revenue.Vehicle TypeExisting Prospective Fleet*% of desired ConversionLight Truck70 mil1%Light Van32.4 mil1Limousine30,0005Shuttle Bus 120,0005Police Car300,0001*U.S. figures. Source: Alte.Special Offer: Free Trial Issue of Forbes
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