Storm Sondors doesn?t like driving.
And yet he?s behind an ambitious project to build a $10,000 electric car through a company bearing his name. During Sondors Electric Car Company?s inaugural press conference at the Los Angeles auto show?just outside the exhibition hall in a space that had formerly been occupied by troubled Elio Motors?the CEO expressed his sentiments about driving and didn?t mince words about how he feels about the automotive industry as a whole. ?I hate industries; I hate tradition,? he declared, at an event that?s very much an industry tradition.
If you don?t think his approach will get the company very far, well, it has worked in the past. Sondors is a crowdfunding success story; he launched a successful electric-bicycle company after, he claims, raising $12 million via Kickstarter and Indiegogo. It is now one of the largest e-bike makers in the United States, stating it has sold more than 30,000 of its electrified fat-tire bikes here and in 40 other countries. As with his e-bikes, in a plan typical of automotive startups, he?s hoping to deliver cars directly to customers without traditional dealerships. Sondors also said the company is looking for customers who have a DIY mindset: The car is being engineered so that owners will be able to do the vast majority of fixes themselves using a simple kit of seven tools?a useful skill given the lack of dealership service. (The company will be able to do remote diagnostics for powertrain issues.)

Sondors...