Smart Cars, the little cars that are popular (although maybe not so profitable) in Europe and Canada, were supposed to have arrived in the States by now, but no (fuzzy) dice yet.
Car dealer Ron Tonkin of Portland, Oregon, gave two men $100,00 so that it could sell Smart Cars, but the cars never showed. Now two men, including an employee of Smartz USA, are now in the pokey for fraud.
Another American company promising but failing to deliver on Smart Cars is Santa Rosa, California-based Zap. In June of 2005, the company said it would begin delivering Smart Cars to eight dealers by the end of the year, but the company so far has only claimed to have delivered one car to a single dealership in New Hampshire.
Zap has been busy though, signing a deal with a Brazilian company to import 50,000 small Obvio cars, as well as working on a "trybrid" vehicle that would couple an electric motor with an engine that runs on gasoline or alcohol.
After 11 years of operation (starting with electric vehicles), Zap had a loss of $10.2 million on revenues of $2.8 million ($188,000 of which comes from advances on Smart Car sales) for the first 9 months of 2005. In November, 2005 Zap sued DaimlerChrysler, the owner of Smart Car manufacturer Smart GmbH, for defaming Zap and hindering its relationships with other companies. Zap is in jeopardy of being taken off the Pacific Stock Exchange because its stock is trading for about the price of 1/3 of a gallon of gas.
Also, debt-strapped fuel cell company Anuvu is waiting on Zap to start ordering 1,100 fuel cells for vehicles (at a cost of $11 million) that it was supposed to start selling in 2005. Don't hold your breath folks.
DaimlerChrysler is reportedly entertaining offers for its Smart GMBH subsidiary, which wants to bring its own cars to the U.S. by 2007. Is Maxwell Smart running these companies?
