1. The competition to develop and market electric vehicles has increased during the last year and is expected to continue to increase. The electric bicycle industry has four major manufacturers and a large group of small companies. The major manufacturers are Honda, Suzuki, Sanyo and Yamaha. They mainly sell products to Japan and Europe. The other group of manufacturers is much smaller in size and sales volume. These manufacturers have products they sell into the U.S., European and Asian markets.

Porter's five-forces model is a powerful tool for systematically diagnosing the principal competitive pressures in a market and assessing how strong and important each one is. The electric vehicle industry is a definite for applying this technique. These are my observations about the five forces affecting the EV industry:

• The rivalry among competing sellers in the EV industry is high, with new businesses popping up every year.
• The...