tonybelding

Venturi have been showing two of their electric cars -- the Eclectic and the Astrolab -- at Wired NextFest in Los Angeles. I just now saw a brief report on CNBC about this, with Venturi's president. He had a couple of interesting things to say. . .

First, they are trying to lay the groundwork for manufacturing their electric cars "here". I'm not sure if he meant in the USA or if he meant California specifically.

He said batteries are expensive, and one of their goals is to reduce the size of the batteries in these vehicles to the minimum possible -- or perhaps replace them with some other technology, if that proves feasible.

When asked about prices for the vehicles, he said it's too early to say because "that depends on volume". However, he said they would like to have a $15,000 car so just about anybody can afford it. (Presumably this would be one of the slow, limited-range, goofy-looking models.) They also want to continue selling very expensive cars for the "extreme" drivers (presumably this would be the Fetish).

Although the Venturi website says the Eclectic and Astrolab are being shown at NextFest, the CNBC report only showed stock footage of the Astrolab and the Fetish, without bothering to identify either of them. (I don't think the name Fetish was ever spoken by anybody.)