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Technology Stocks : Energy Conversion Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jacq who wrote (3316)	3/10/1999 5:01:00 PM
From: fred whitridge	Respond to of 8393

Unique, EV Global and ECD all sort of wave their hands in an excited manner when talking about the scooter market but the hard details are few and far between. Anybody heard anything concrete on Piaggio and Sanoh lately? I thought not... In 1996 the scooter market was an annual build of 14,170,000 units and produced $17 billion dollars in revenue. Chinese mfgs were about 65.3% of the total. Piaggio produced 350,000 units. Honda was 950,000. At least 8 major manufacturers have electric scooters in some form of production with prices ranging from $1,880 to $7,280 and a tight cluster in the 4-5k range. These prices compare favorably with gasoline models and some even deliver BETTER performance in acceleration. Average price of a Honda gasoline scooter was $2500, average of the Chinese mfgs was $900, Average of Yamaha was $2600. Apparently the "scooter" definition has changed since I last rode one on my honeymoon, gone are the 50cc Vespas, in are "scooters" that are 250cc and even higher. (We used to call those hogs in my teenage years.) Most of these electric scooters are wearing 3 to 4kwh of batteries and the predominance of those are lead acid. And no, don't ask me where these numbers came from or to post anything more specific. (But I didn't make them up and think the source is pretty reliable.)