If you are one of those who reveled in demise of the original Beetle, we have bad news for you! An American company called iCon is about to bring it back, but this time as an electric car.

Whether you hate or love the Beetle, there is no doubt that it is an iconic car. So it was the obvious choice for iCon Electric Vehicle Group. They are going to reintroduce some of the world’s most famous and iconic models as electric vehicles. Pretty cool idea, but not a particularly good start with the Beetle!

They call this Beetle the the iCon Type B, and are going to acquire the same tooling used to build the original car in Mexico until 2003. Like the original Volkswagen the iCon Type B will be an air-cooled, rear (electric) motored, rear wheel drive vehicle. Sharing the same platform as the iCon Type B, future models of iCon Electric Vehicles include the Type G (Volkswagen Karman Ghia), Type 356 (Porsche 356), and Type 550 (Porsche 550 Spyder).

iCon says the Type B will have a price of under $20,000. That to be honest sounds a bit optimistic. and so does the company’s hope in raising up to $1B through “crowd funding”:

“That’s ‘B’ as in billion, like the inaugural Type B model” the company official professes. “A billion dollars is less than what was written off in the recent bailout of an American car  manufacturer. If every man, woman and child contributed to rebuilding the Made in USA brand through iCon Electric Vehicles as an example, the ticket is less than the price of a latte, or $3,20 per head.”

UPDATE: Turns out this project, and the iCon company itself, do not exist as such! We featured the article here based on the press release they sent us a week ago, but now, and despite the great interest people have shown to it, the company’s website and Facebook page have disappeared and nobody has heard of them since. Fox News was particularly interested in this, and conducted an investigation to find out more. They came to this conclusion: iCon does not exist.