On Wednesday, April 02, 2003 ET received this email:

From: Bob Dixon bob@ windcheetah.co.uk
To: etimes@ teleport.com

Kronosport fraud

Hello Bruce,

I have just been looking at your website and noticed the section regarding
Kronosport. Ed Kron of Kronosport approached me to buy the manufacturing
license for these vehicles a couple of years ago. Our involvement with
Mr.Kron was one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever had in my
business career, and he leaves behind him a legacy of broken promises and
unpaid bills. You can see from the attached letters how our business
relationship ended.

***

E. Kron
Mellon Bank Center
1735 Market Street.
Suite A500
Philadelphia
PA 19103 USA

16/8/01

Dear Ed,

Please accept this letter as formal notice of termination of Kronosport's
license agreement to produce our range of electric vehicles and
quadricycles. I'm sorry that we have had to take this course of action but
you have left us with no confidence in your ability to raise the necessary
funding. I'm aware that since I refused your request for yet another
extension to the payment terms you have threatened us with legal proceedings
and would warn you against such action.

Your threats to "tie AVD up in the US courts for two years" if we don't
comply to your wishes does not intimidate us and is not the way we do
business. We are in the process of making alternative commercial
arrangements in the US to produce and distribute our vehicles, with this in
mind I would ask you to remove any references regarding your involvement
with our vehicles from the internet and cease to represent our company and
its designs in any way.

We would also request that any of your patent applications made on our
behalf or involving our designs are now withdrawn.

I have some correspondence from David Luddy, a member of your staff. The
letter states that you are continuing to demonstrate our vehicles to
potential customers. I would ask you to terminate these activities
immediately, you are aware that I have terminated your contract and at this
stage you are fraudulently claiming to represent our products. We will be
making frequent checks to ensure that our rights as designers and licensors
are not being infringed.

On a final note I would like to say how disappointed I am that we have had
to terminate the agreement, further to my letter to you dated 27th February
this year you gave me clear written assurances that you would have the funds
available in June to pay for the license, following these assurances I
turned down two lucrative offers for the rights to manufacture our vehicles
in the US.

You have almost continuously overstated your financial position, as well as
your ability to market and produce these vehicles. Your reckless commercial
behaviour has done serious financial to my own company and possibly terminal
damage to your own . I have read with interest the various press releases on
the internet about the level of grant funding that you have secured on the
back of my companies designs and have asked the Department of Community and
Economic Development to look into matter this to ensure that my company's
reputation isn't tainted by Kronosport`s failure to honour commitments that
have been made to secure grant aid .

If our negotiations to secure another US partner are successful we will be
prepared to buy back the tooling that you purchased from us. We will be
prepared to refund the full invoice amount back to you.

Yours sincerely

Robert Dixon F.R.S.A.
Managing Director

***

Kron had continually overstated his financial position and misled us into
believing that he had the means to purchase the manufacturing license. He
found it difficult to grasp even the simplest technical issues and
eventually it became clear that he had no manufacturing expertise or
capability. Kronosport had no solid financial footing and was merely using
his association with my company as a front to raise grant aid from the State
of Philadelphia. He never had any intention of paying us for the
manufacturing license. It is disappointing to see that he is using your
website to continue with his fraudulent claims that he is the US
manufacturer of our products.

I am currently in meetings with the British Department of Trade and Industry
to see what action we will now take to prevent Kronosport from falsely
representing my companies designs. Our quadricycle has won numerous design
awards, including a prestigious Millennium Product Award given to us by the
UK Design Council. It has been featured in the media all over the world and
my ownership of the design is irrefutable .

Our own website is at http://www.a-v-d.com

We are also well known for the Windcheetah tricycle which we manufacture
http://www.windcheetah.co.uk

If you need any clarification of any of the points I have mentioned please
feel free to contact me. I sincerely hope you will remove the Kronosport
link from your web page in order to preserve your own integrity.

Regards, Bob Dixon

***

ET contacted Ed Kron requesting a response, which we received on:
Friday, April 04, 2003

Response from:
E. Kron ekron@ mstkw.com
To: 'Remy C'
Cc: 'bruce meland'

Subject: Kronosport fraud - Kronosport Response

Bruce & Remy,

We are in the process of drafting a legal complaint against Mr. Dixon for
libel and breach of contract.

As you know, we severed our relationship with AVD after he failed to adhere
to the specific terms and conditions of the license agreement. It took AVD
almost a year after signing the agreement to provide us with the required
drawings for his quad design. Not only were the drawings incomplete, but
over $130,000 worth of vehicles that I purchased from AVD contained serious
defects. (Broken differential spokes, hubs, etc.)

One vehicle I purchased broke during a demonstration for Independence
Historic National Park in Philadelphia and caused quite an embarrassment.
The vehicles had an electrical problem which prevented the vehicle from
traveling a up slight incline when fully loaded. Mr. Dixon's solution was to
send us a second circuit breaker to install. (This did not work.)

Finally, Mr. Dixon refused to sign a patent which I filed with the U.S.
Patent office--under his name-to protect our rights to manufacture the
vehicle. This was clearly a violation of the license agreement and caused me
to incur a legal bill in excess of $20,000. I will gladly provide you with
documentation to this effect. In addition to purchasing over $130k worth of
vehicles, I paid him $20k under the license agreement and $5,000 for
fiberglass plugs. My fiberglass fabricator advised me that we had to spend
over $12,000 to modify the plugs in order to generate molds resulting in
another big dispute with Mr. Dixon.

There are two sides to every story. The EVAA is correct; we cannot afford to
pay the annual $5,000 fee to join the association. Last week I was a
featured speaker at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Clean Cities Conference on the
topic of light duty electric vehicles. The folks at EVAA provided me with
excellent information for use in my presentation - I don't think that I have
a bad reputation with the organization. Other associations cost far less and
will prove more beneficial for Kronosport. (i.e., National Parks and
Recreation Assn., American Zoo and Aquarium Assn., State Fleet Managers
Assn., etc.)

Remy, as we previously discussed, I trashed the AVD plans and spent the past
year working with two excellent engineering firms to develop our own light
duty electric vehicle. Although we have a pedal option, we are not a
quadricycle like AVD's vehicles. Unlike Dixon's vehicles, we utilize one
standard chassis for all bodies. Additionally, we are powered with a 36v
electric drive system as compared to AVD's 12v drive system. (AVD touts that
its vehicles can carry 450 pounds plus a driver - they can't.) AVD's
vehicles are underpowered and inefficient.

I believe that AVD many be undergoing financial difficulties. A vendor that
supplies galvanized bodies to AVD recently told me that he had to repossess
product sold to AVD. http://www.wilstow.co.uk

AVD may be undergoing some hardship - other European companies manufacture
quads very similar to AVD:
see http://www.brox.co.uk and http://www.e-missionlogistics.com

I believe that most quad designs are an offshoot of the Brox design,
including AVDs.

I request that you do not forward this e-mail to Mr. Dixon. If either of you
would like to discuss this on the telephone, please give me a call. I value
my reputation. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Ed Kron
Kronosport, Inc.
(215) 575-7614

[[ I have spoken to Ed and let him know that I did intend on posting his
reply in total to the ET list, along with Bob Dixon's original email to
Electrifying Times. I will alter our Kronosport webpages on the ET website
to reflect the long rocky history of these novel vehicle designs which has
suddenly come to our attention. Much like the Trans2 which has since evolved
into many separate companies (GEM and a host of others jockeying for
position...) each claim sole propriety of an original idea, which has long
since mutated into many different forms and variations. This kind of
infighting only postpones and damages the future of EVs, while depleting
already limited resources, only lining lawyer's pockets. Hopefully these
vehicles will settle into the NEV market with the best engineering possible.
So I'll let ET readers work it out for themselves, and I won't let
Electrifying Times take sides, being drawn into an OK Coral. What ET wants
are great EVs... if this is what has to take place behind the scenes to grow
bumper crops, so be it. As the saying goes, takes a lot of bullshit to grow
beautiful flowers... You be the judge who deserves what... who's in the
wrong, who's in the right... in the end the best vehicle with the best
marketing and the best overall image will win out... It's doggy dog out
there, what can I say. Our role at ET is to "report, nurture, encourage and
advocate." So in the best interest of all involved, I just hope they quickly
work out their differences and think about what's best for the planet. Remy
C. ]]