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No one is bringing good, solid design into an environmentally friendly vehicle," says Franz von Holzhausen. "We either get strange, quirky vehicles that the general public isn't ready for, or we get iterations of the Prius. Nobody would buy a Prius if it were a normally powered car. My opportunity is to create a brand that revolves not only around clean, environmental stories, but also around awesome design. We are past the idea of an environmentally friendly vehicle needing to look different. As the idea becomes more mainstream, the quirkiness of the product will go away. People won't want to sacrifice anything, including style, to own an efficient car.

I really, really like the Flex, mostly because I am absolutely taken with the design: the shape, the proportions, and yes, the squareness. This is the American people mover boiled down to its pure, classic element. It is the utter antithesis of every jacked-up, pseudo-macho SUV and every bloated, trying-to-be-swoopy crossover.