1998 Automotive Composites / VS Composites Paradigm

The Baja is actually the second all-plastic thermoformed vehicle from Automotive Design. Last year they unveiled production plans for the Paradigm, a four-door mid-side vehicle that has a thermoformed body made of coextruded acrylic styrene acrylonitrile and ABS sheet. It will get approximately 50 miles per gallon in highway driving, will weight less than 1,800 pounds (compared to about 3,800 pounds for a similar-sized, steel-shelled car), and will cost about $12,000. Approximately named, this vehicle shifts the paradigma away from long-held perceptions about the limitations of plastics as structural pieces.

The Paradigm is to be built and initially sold in China under a joint venture between the car's designer, Automotive Design and the Chrinese car maker Huatong Motors of Deyang, China. Automotive Design also plans to sell the car in Mexico and the developing nations of Central and South America by 2001 and is negotiating with distributors to market the cars in Costa Rica and Peru, among other sites.

With help from federal and local funding, Automotive Design will invest approximately $26 million to open a thermoforming and assembly plant in San Antonio. The 160,000 square-foot facility will include a vacuum forming line to shape the plastic sheets. The panels will then be shipped to a new, Huatong-run plant in Deyang which will be called the Sinoameican Motor Corp. and which will include nine coexrusion and 21 vacuum forming lines. Estimates for production of the car in China range from 5,000 sold in 2000 to as many as 30,000 sold by 2003 with the Deyang plant having the capacity to make as many as 60,000 cars annually.

source: via mace-nh.com