On 4 March R K Grant, S J Appell and A C O'Keefe of Zolfo Cooper were appointed joint administrators of Modec Ltd., the Conventry-based electric truck maker whose factory David Cameron MP, then opposition leader, opened in June 2007. Modec has a sizeable number of corporate and municipal fleets among its customers, including Tesco and Fedex.

On 8th March, "Deeply concerned by the news that Modec has entered administration, making about half of its workforce redundant," Liberty Electric Cars CEO Barry Shrier said he had committed "significant resources within the Liberty organization to see how to help Modec."

News like Modec's is unwelcome all round, particularly as battery-electric urban distribution trucks and vans operating on short-range routes out of depots capable of deploying fast chargers or fork-lift-type battery swaps are considered by some, (note that Ford's first EV is the electric Transit Connect van) to be a safer bet than wooing private consumers with electric cars.

In the light of this sorry news, we have reviewed the coverage of companies profiled in the initial edition of our Electric Vehicles: Energy, Infrastructure and the Mobility Market, we have decided to remove the sections profiling the activities of established and start-up EV makers and battery makers. Some things, we feel, are best left to be reported by media capable of monitoring news on a daily basis. The past performance of a company is not necessarily a reliable guide to its future survival, and in many cases in the still-infant specialist EV sector, there has not yet been any history of sustainable operation to go on.

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Toby Procter

Trend Tracker Limited

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