Well I have some bad news - it seems that my plans of manufacturing the car in low volumes are being shot down. Problem is that the pakistani govt does not like low volume auto manufacturers at all (since they compete with Toyota/ Honda) and to preserve these large car man companies one requires to show a factory layout of similar size. Roughly put, the regulations require a investment of $10-20 million without which the paki government will not allow you to manufacture vehicles. That is sad. In the US I can simply register my very own kit car without issues.
The only option left is to try and sell conversions. Need everybodys thoughts on this. I can either convert existing mehran's or swifts. I am going to lay out the costs for everyone to advise me on whether this is worth pursuing. There are two choices in this:
1. Low powered conversion - 72v, 23HP - PKR 300,000
2. Rocket ship - 120V, 70Hp - PKR 450,000
Obviously since much of swift's stuff can be sold off, the cost would be somewhat less than above.
This does not include the cost of batteries.There would be two choices in batteries:
1. Deep Cycle Lead Acid batteries (80km range, 80,000km life): PKR 90,000.00
2. Lithium Phosphate Batteries (120-150km range, 350,000km life): PKR 280,000.00
Driving Cost: PKR 1 / km for deep cycle and PKR 0.7 or less per km for Lithium
Maintenance cost: Zero, except batteries.
The second option is to produce a car based on a existing old VW chassis and suspension. We would build and deploy a fiberglass nice looking body on it. However the cheapest low powered version of the car would still cost around 500-550k.
Is this too expensive for the local market, even with the savings? Just trying to gather some thoughts.