La Repubblica - Etioca wants a factory in Turin

Etioca wants a factory in Turin and aims for the Maserati from Grugliasco

Giorgetto Giugiaro is also ready to invest in the Israeli Mark lshakov’s project to build electric vehicles to rent to taxi drivers The company aims to produce 10,000 by 2024 and manage the services via app.
DIEGO LONGHIN

The production plans have already been defined: the first 10 thousand electric taxis will be in circulation by the end of 2024. The following year another 45 thousand will leave the factories, to then reach a target of around 100 thousand in the course of 2027. On the other hand, after the first taxi prototype was unveiled, renamed “Miner”, developed by the Etioca group and built by Turin-based Coggiola, a noble body shop purchased by the Gibraltar-based company, pre-orders exceeded 90,000. Not bad for a product that does not yet exist in its definitive lines and on which Giorgetto Giugiaro and his son Fabrizio are putting their hands. The latter is a first indication of the feasibility of the project, so much so that the two designers are ready to create an ad hoc development center by investing resources and work together with the founder of the company, the Israeli Mark Ishakov, who in his life already has carried on various initiatives, such as the invention and production in China of multilingual keyboards able to switch from one character to another thanks to LED technology. And then it developed the world’s thinnest LED screen for advertising on taxi roofs. And that’s how he approached the world of “cabs”. But be careful: Miner, made on the “Anna” platform, is not sold, it is rented. Average price € 0.99 per kilometer, in Italy it should be € 0.80. And the taxi driver will have all the services, from washing to maintenance, from changing the battery pack in three minutes to insurance, including because, as the founder and CEO of the Ishakov group says, “it’s not just a car, but of an escosystem of services “. And the co-ceo, Roberto Fiorello, adds: “The goal is to rent, not sell it, because the whole model and business is based on that, on pay for use”. Or rather, the electric vehicle, which is one of the pieces of the business, is the means to convey e-commerce, also through the App, which represents the heart of the network, services for taxi drivers and passengers, fintech, which is based on a cryptocurrency, and advertising, which is internal and external to the media. “This gives us the opportunity to create a new generation of vehicles and solutions,” Ishakov emphasizes. The market taken as a reference is huge: Europe, the Middle East and North America, with which there is already an open dialogue with Miami and Palm Beach for the transformation of the taxi service. China does not appear in the target countries, not even for the production of the vehicle, which will be built between Italy, Israel and Latvia, where in addition to renting taxis, the company would like to build a gigafactory.
The other plants? The ecosystem will rest on a solid industrial base to create other means with the modular platform. like those for transport, which have already been pre-ordered by important names, but on which there is confidentiality, of logistics. Mouths sewn even when trying to probe which factories they have set their sights on. Something is leaking from Turin, where they have taken over Coggiola (and the car maker certificate) and according to rumors there would be a negotiation for the former Maserati plant in Grugliasco, just outside the capital. Plant looking for a new vocation after Stellantis decided to merge everything in Mirafiori. There are still 200 employees working on the site until 2024, when the bodywork department will also stop. There are also spaces at stake in Pinerolo and, in Southern Italy, in Taranto. Piedmont is central, however, in the company’s risk, on which the initial investment was 400 million dollars, thanks in large part to the commitment of the founder himself, with the aim of reaching 1.2 billion in the next 3 years. “We are in dialogue with some family offices based in Geneva and Israeli realities,” says Fiorello. The Gibraltar company estimates that, based on the systems used for this type of initiative, its current valuation is $ 27 billion. “Based on our business plan, we estimate internal valuation will reach $ 232 billion over seven years of operation, explains Ishakov. And the government of Gibraltar has included the Ethiopian project in the National Economic Development Plan for the next 5 years, which provides for a total investment of 500 million pounds.
Expected to land on the stock exchange, not in Europe, but in the USA. Chardan is the independent investment bank based in New York that is following the dossier for the entry of the group on the Nasdaq list. “An important step that will allow us to feed our project”, says Fiorello. This is an additional guarantee for other investors compared to industrial pre-orders. The category of taxi drivers, especially in Italy, is not the simplest, but the requests, for which it is enough to sign a pre-contract of 100 euros, which will be returned as credit when the car is delivered, continue to arrive.