Gerald, The Pure Energy fuel whose brand name will be PURE, is not supposed to be public knowledge since FORD has not yet made a long-term committment to the fuel or announced anything. They will only announce such agreement or committment when the fuel will be easily available. Thats where Mr. Andlinger comes in. He has the long term relationships with several major oil companies and has put PURE in their map. Everything here is linked:
First, you have to have auto manufacturers embrace the fuel--the most important determinant for auto manufacturer acceptance is whether the modification to the car is do-able and not costly. In PURE's case YES!!! The Ford Taurus that I drove with PURE inside had just a small device placed beneath the fuel intake system. It costs Ford only $75 to build and it adds just $100 to the cost of the car to the consumer. Compare $100 to $3000-5000 additional costs for other alternative fuel vehicles THUS, HERE PURE ENERGY HAS A REAL COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE!!!
Second, PURE must be readily available, for a manufacturer to spend the capital in building thousands of vehicles. You see, if the consumer has a tough time finding where to fill up with this fuel, then there will be little demand for the cars. But if its as readily available as gasoline, the people will buy the cars!!! And if it doesn't cost gas station owners anything more to sell the fuel, then we are in heaven!! Its as simple as that! PURE has an advantage over other alternative fuels in that it can be distributed and sold though existing GAS STATIONS. No modifications or capital needs to be invested to sell the fuel. AND the competition?
ELECTRIC CARS--Needs a whole new network of "charging" stations througout the country--very expensive(Billions$$$ needed)
Compressed Natural gas--New network of compressed natural gas pumps--cost to gas stations-in the millions nationwide.
Propane --- New network of special propane tanks--also millions
Ethanol and methanol-- special pump additions--thousands$$ needed
Third, the fuel must be affordable. PURE's production cost is $.60/gallon VS. gasoline's $.90/gallon. So it will be priced competitively to gasoline with higher margins.
Is it clean burning? YES!! Here is an example: It takes 25 cars running on gasoline to equal the emmissions of 1 car running on PURE, 5 cars running on Methonal, 7 cars running on Ethanol, 4 cars running on compressed natural gas and 12 trucks running on propane.
Pure Energy's strategy will be to begin offering the fuel to its captive market, the fleets(government, industrial, commercial). This is a $24B/year market. Then 6-12 months later they will start to offer it to everybody. Expect 2 or 3 licensing agreements signed with major oil companies soon. Worldwide distribution is also in the works with the first markets to get the fuel to be Japan, Thailand, So. Korea.
I have done painstaking work the past 6 months researching the fuel. I spoken with the fuel's inventor Dr. Stephen Paul, Rick Andlinger, John Hervey- DLJ's oil analyst, the EPA, the DOE and many others and truelly cannot find one negative aspect to the fuel. Its has all the ingrediants of a winner and Knic of a blockbuster stock.
The company has stated that they plan on having 5 plants up and running by years end(1997) So, my guess is that the IPO announcement should come any day, since it would have to come in February or March. (It takes 6-8months to build each plant) At a cost of $60M each. The IPO should be a $300-400M IPO and the talk is that they will sell only 15-20% of the company in the IPO to the public. Can't confirm that though!
The 60 day period ending Dec.4th for Pure Energy news still stands as of today. But my guess is that they may only be able to get one release pertaining to Pure out by then and the rest before Christmas. Just my guess though!!
Good Luck---I hope that helped.
Regards
Juan |
