2007 TH!NK

2007 TH!NK

In December they were begging the Norwegian government for moola. Fast forward a couple months and Th!nk representatives are meeting with eight states in the U.S to discuss plans for an American manufacturing facility and technical center.

Th!nk says the manufacturing plant will provide 300 jobs and produce 16,000 cars per year to start. Future plans call for up to 900 hundred workers to produce 60,000 vehicles (assuming people start buying cars again). The technical center would provide 70 additional jobs for engineers and electric drive specialists.

"The U.S. is quickly overtaking Europe as an attractive market for EVs and is an ideal location to engineer and build EVs," said Th!nk CEO

Richard Canny. "We see ourselves playing a small but potentially growing role in re-inventing the U.S. auto industry by bringing back new manufacturing jobs to the U.S. to replace internal combustion engine vehicles that are expensive to operate and maintain with clean, efficient electric vehicles."Th!nk brass and Michigan representatives are in Ann Arbor this week to discuss the company's manufacturing needs and to drive the Th!nk City compact all-electric vehicle. The City goes 112 miles per charge and has a completely recyclable interior.

The company plans to apply for low-interest loans from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program to support their electric car production plans.

"Electric vehicles like the TH!NK city represent an opportunity for the U.S. to become more energy independent," said Rockport Capital Partners Co-Managing Partner Wilber James. "Based on the production rate of 30,000 electric vehicles per year, the TH!NK city fleet would replace 900 million gallons of oil over ten years."

Take that, foreign oil.

Source: Th!nk via PRNewswire