It didn’t take long for the Brazilian buggy to start turning heads in California–and plenty of other places, besides. Customers liked the the gull-wing doors and the “carputer” that plays satellite radio, but they really went crazy over the engine. Some cars go on gas and batteries, some can go on a mixture of alcohol and gas. The Obvio, however, burns gasoline, natural gas, ethanol or any combination of the three. (A separate version will run on electricity only.) When the Brazilian “tribrid” hit the San Francisco auto show a few months later, Machado had to resort to using crowd-control measures. “We had to rope it off,” he says.
The Rio de Janeiro factory begins pre-production next year, and the first batch of 50,000 Brazilian mini-cars is scheduled to roll off the docks in the United States in 2008. More than 30 dealers have queued up. Two more deals–70,000 cars for Europe and an additional 30,000 for Japan, and a plan to ship stripped-down cars for assembly to China–are also in the works. By the end of the decade, Machado’s factory could be turning out more than 200,000 cars a year.
The Obvio didn’t spring out of nowhere. It’s partly the product of more than a quarter century of Brazilian effort to promote biofuels, especially ethanol distilled from sugar cane. Long before Machado came along, Brazilian engineers had taken a European invention–flex fuel cars, which run on gasoline or ethanol–and turned it into a practical technology. The Obvio makes use of virtual fuel sensors, developed by Brazilian engineers, that cue the engine to adjust to the exact blend of gasoline and alcohol in the tank at any time. Machado, a lawyer and former real-estate developer, added an extra spin: his crew converted the powerful 1.6-liter gasoline engine of the popular BMW Mini for the tribrid and then tweaked it so it got a higher ethanol performance.
Machado also launched a lean business plan, which relies heavily on existing parts (85 percent are off the shelf) and entirely on advance sales. Not a single Obvio is assembled until a firm order rolls in, which is meant to avoid costly stockpiling or prepaying suppliers. “It’s like Dell computers meets Detroit,” he says. Machado also added charm, irreverence and an eyepopping paint job that looks as if it might have been done by Ed (Big Daddy) Roth, the ’50s-era king of custom cars. “People look at the car and start to laugh,” says Machado, “and I think that’s great.”
The Obvio apparently appealed to Steven Schneider. Schneider, the CEO of a small, environmentally friendly California auto dealer called ZAP (Zero Air Pollution), was looking to import an economy- size environmentally sound car to the United States (a $1 billion deal with DaimlerChrysler had just fallen through), when the Obvio came along. “These are absolute pocket rockets,” says Schneider, whose ear for sound bites matches his eye for deals. “These cars are where muscle cars meet green cars.” The electric version, which is lighter, can go from zero to 60 in 4.2 seconds. Schneider put down $700 million for a 20 percent stake in the Rio-based company, Obvio! Automotoveículos S.A., and the green machine from Brazil was on a roll.
It’s not clear how many Americans will give up their SUVs for the Obvio. Measuring just 2.75 meters (85cm shorter than the Mini Cooper) and weighing a trifling 700 kilos, it makes other compacts look bulky. Machado is trying to ease doubts with souped-up safety measures. He called on a veteran aeronautics engineer to rig the cabin with the same reinforced safety rings that gird small aircraft cockpits and has contracted Lotus Engineering to develop the Obvio’s crash and pollution specs. Another obstacle is poor availability of ethanol: only 1,000 of 170,000 U.S. filling stations pump the stuff.
As America goes green, the Obvio may distinguish itself on performance and price. The standard model can go from zero to 60 in six seconds and still save on fuel. At $14,000, it costs $1,000 less than the Smart car and less than half the price of the Toyota Prius (a sportier version with a 250hp engine planned for 2009 will fetch $28,000). “If the Obvio does what it’s supposed to do, there is tremendous versatility,” says Philip Reed, consumer-advice editor for Edmunds.com, a leading online automotive Web site. “The Obvio buyer is probably someone that has a lot of money or someone that wants to make a statement,” says Reed. Whatever that statement may be, for now it’s coming in loud and clear.
