FISHER BODY FAMILY PLANS ELECTRIC-DRIVE BUS BUSINESS
Some of the descendents of the family that founded Fisher Body Co. in 1908, later to be integrated in General Motors Corporation, are returning to their roots with Fisher Coachworks LLC, a company formed earlier this year to become a manufacturer of electric-drive buses following a new design that doubles fuel efficiency.
Gregory Fisher, chief executive officer and founder of Fisher Coachworks, along with other investors and several other Fisher family members, have teamed up with Autokinetics Inc. to build a transit bus that weighs less than traditional transit buses and could play a major role in bringing greater fuel efficiency to this kind of public transport. A plant will be installed in Troy, Michigan.
Autokinetics, an engineering design firm in Rochester Hills, has spent the last seven years designing the bus and Fisher Coachworks of Troy is gearing up to be the manufacturer. The Fisher Coachworks 40-foot Transit Bus is to be powered by an electric engine with batteries that would be recharged by a diesel generator. The company plans to begin demonstrating the vehicle during the second half of 2008 and hopes to begin production by late 2009. Fisher Coachworks claims its bus will get more than twice the miles per gallon of the average hybrid transit bus and says that will give its bus a technological advantage, among others by using ultra-lightweight stainless steel unibody construction. Fisher’s launch product will be a 40’ Transit Bus that is nominally half the weight of current hybrid buses on the market.
Fisher is the grandson of Alfred J. Fisher, one of the original Fisher brothers who on July 22nd, 1908, formed the Fisher Body Company to take advantage of the paradigm shift from carriages to cars by building chassis designs from metal, rather than wood. 100 years later, Fisher Coachworks similarly forms to capitalize on the paradigm shift from traditional vehicle architectures and powertrains, to “no compromises” energy optimized vehicles. Fisher Coachworks’ approach embraces a total vehicle systems engineering methodology, technology advances in hybrid and battery systems, as well as an innovative and patented unibody design featuring special stainless steel alloy construction in NitronicTM stainless steel using low-cost manufacturing techniques. This alloy has more than three times the strength of regular steel and is almost impervious to corrosion and fatigue. The constructors claim that the vehicle will have up to five times the design life of ordinary steel vehicles, which together with the fact that stainless is 100% recyclable, makes this an ideal green raw material for vehicle structures. As a result, Fisher Coachworks may be able to offer extended warranties on some components that practically span a lifetime.
