Haven’t yet heard of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Company (TSX: ZNN)? I hadn’t either until two days ago. Honda Schmonda and the fuel-cell cars that are only available in SoCal. You can buy your ZENN car (that stands for Zero Emissions, No Noise) in Oak Forest, IL, Bozeman, MT and Fayetteville, NC. And pretty much everywhere in between (unfortunately, they’re not yet available in Canada, even though they’re a Canadian company - ironic, eh?):).

ZENN Motor Company was started by Ian Clifford - a professional photographer (BFA NSCAD ‘84)! - who had a desire to clean up the air and make the world a better place while sitting idling in a traffic jam one day, exhaust fumes all around him. Clifford began his research in 1995 and the company went through two previous incarnations as Feel Good Cars and Dauphine Electrics. Clifford teamed up with EEStor, a Texas-based maker of energy storage systems (whose main investors also invested in Google, Palm and Amazon when they were starting up). This was 2001. By 2006, Feel Good Cars was listed on the TSX.V. In June 2006, Feel Good Cars became the ZENN Motor Company.

Can’t Drive on the Highway, Just in The City

So far the ZENN can’t go fast enough and is not licensed for highway driving. But if you live in Manhattan or any other major urban area and rarely leave the city, it’s perfect. Cost is reasonable, around $17,000 plus taxes. I know that if I was in the market for buying a car I’d check them out. They’ve got a hatchback design and you can even order them with a sunroof for extra.

Great Stock to Watch

My regular readers know I’m mostly a dividends investor, but I just can’t help looking at positive potential growth opportunities such as this. The ZENN is currently trading around $5.55 (no dividends) CAD, but I think there’s a lot more room for growth. They’ve got distribution throughout the US market and are starting to implement in Quebec, Canada. One California town has adopted the ZENN for all of its municipal vehicles. And there are more stories like that on their site. The stock is on sale a bit from its 52-week high at $6.89, but still up quite considerably from its 52-week low at $2.60. Earnings per share are still in the red at -$0.27, but I’m guessing that can’t last for long in this environment. Besides, they only just went public two years ago. Two years ago we were in a radically different economic and energy climate. I’ll bet ZENN is doing quite well now with the Honda back-up and new influx of compact-buyers and spike in electric car interest everywhere.

Just thought I’d let you know - what do you think of the ZENN? Would you pass it over because of its looks or design? Or because it can’t do highways? One solution is that you could save your regular clunker for the highways until it totally clunks out, meanwhile only using the ZENN in the city. It’s the cities, after all, where smog and air pollution are often the worst. We need all the help we can get.

I’d love to hear what you think - if you’ve Stumbled over here and are new to the site, drop me a comment down below, and subscribe to my feed for more updates like this one (click on the orange box near the logo).

So, I’m going to be moving into one of the Japanese car-makers. The question is which one. Many of their fundamentals are similar. The biggest discrepancy is simply Toyota’s market capitalization. I had no idea it was that large. But Honda might have a more diverse product line-up, being as they’re into motorcycles, boat engines and lawnmowers as well.

Honda (NYSE: HMC)

Market Capitalization	$60.7B
Revenue (FYR)	$113.2B
EPS	$3.12
P/E Ratio	10.7x
Shares Outstanding	1.8 B
Avg. Daily Share Volume (Last 10 Days)	1.6 M
Dividend Yield	2.40%

Honda’s got a much better “price,” i.e., share price than Toyota (which we know isn’t the best way to measure the “price” of a company’s stock, but still. It does indicate the amount of my own money that I must dispense with in order to buy the stock). And it’s PE suggests that it might be valued higher due to quicker growth or more projected growth than Toyota.

Toyota (NYSE: TM)

Market Capitalization	$142.5B
Revenue (FYR)	$247.9B
EPS	$10.19
P/E Ratio	8.9x
Shares Outstanding	1.6 B
Avg. Daily Share Volume (Last 10 Days)	725.2 K
Dividend Yield	3.13%

As you can see, Toyota’s got much more of the market than Honda. But Toyota doesn’t have as diverse a product line-up. They do specialize in some interesting-looking “personal mobility vehicles,” though. You can find these if you go to their site and look up under their “concept vehicles.”

As for “goodwill” and company intangibles, Toyota and Honda are also similar-feeling to me. Honda ranks a bit higher on reliability and trustworthiness and creativity, though. And, of course, the Honda Civic is the top-selling (and top-stolen) car in Canada, for what it’s worth.

The reason I’m getting into one of these companies (and maybe, probably? eventually both) is for foreign diversification; also because they’re truly global companies; and because I think they’re going to weather the oil-crushing, gas-guzzling auto-maker collapse that seems to be upon us with the demise of such companies as GM. Both Honda and Toyota are innovators. And if that Genepax company’s water-running car technology is ever picked up in Japan, you’d think it would be by either Honda or Toyota. What do you think? Do you agree that these two have lasting power?

I think I’m going to go with Honda first, because it looks as though it has more room to grow, and it’s more diversified. But I’d love to hear additional thoughts and perspectives. I won’t be buying much at first. I’ll be diversifying over time and adding at different levels.