delusionofgrandeur

In the early morning of Saturday, the MEGA van factory in Chanas, South of Lyon, France was destroyed by fire.

MEGA is a brand of the Aixam microcar company which produces minivans which fall under the ’sans permis’ category in France. The vehicles are available either with a fuel efficient Kubota diesel or a completely battery-electric drive train. The vehicles are exported to several countries in the EU including the UK.

While the entire MEGA line has been destroyed by the fire, the other Aixam lines at other sites remain in operation. As for the MEGA line, Aixam certainly aren’t sitting around crying about it. They’ve already rented a new building and intend to set up the MEGA line there as soon as possible. In the mean time they claim extensive stocks will help them to overcome any supply issues.

The Official Aixam-MEGA Press Release:

A fire occurred Saturday Dec. 1, at six o’clock in the morning on the
site of Chanas in France. The MEGA production plant was totally
destroyed. Nevertheless, the offices and other plants have not been
damaged.
An investigation is underway to determine the causes.
This plant consisted of two assembly lines: the MEGA line and a small
AIXAM line of about twenty vehicles a day.
The company has a large stock and the site of the AIX-LES-BAINS – which
usually manufactures 50 vehicles AIXAM per day - will increase its
production. Thus there will be no impact on the delivery of AIXAM
vehicles to the end customer.
Arrangements have already been taken by AIXAM MEGA board: a building
located in Chanas area has already been rented and the assembly line MEGA
will soon restart there. The AIXAM assembly line will follow but anyhow
AIX-LES-BAINS will offset its forecasted production. No technical
unemployment is scheduled on site.
Once permission is given, the site will be cleared away, a permit shall
be deposited in order to rebuild a new building.
The company AIXAM MEGA continues its vehicle production to meet still
better the needs of its customers.

Now, I’m always suspicious when something bad happens to Electric Vehicles, like when the General Motors EV-1s were recalled and scrapped against the customer’s wishes. Although there’s always the chance that some malicious ‘oil-lobby’ vested interest could be responsible, I’m sure there is a more mundane explanation such as a stray cigarette-end or even arson(!)

It will be interesting to see what the fire investigation turns up, that is, if I can even find out the outcome. Indeed, the only source I have for information on this fire is the Aixam-MEGA press release. I’ve been all over looking for another news source (Google News France etc). If anyone happens to find another source, please let me know.

I hope that the MEGA line gets back to full swing as soon as possible as what the world needs right now is more super-efficient and battery electric vehicles to compensate for the ever increasing cost of oil. Hopefully, the relative simplicity of the MEGA design will help with the swift recover.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 3:49 am and is filed under Automotive.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.