Kentucky lures EV maker

Williamsburg, Ky.-based Global Green Cars said today it plans to move forward with building an electric vehicle production facility in the state of Kentucky. The facility is expected to produce up to 30,000 electric cars and trucks per year when completed.

The company's President Brooks Agnew told the Cleantech Group today that Global Green Cars received a $15.5 million financial incentive package from Kentucky’s Economic Development Finance Authority that enticed the company to move from Idaho.

"Kentucky had the best incentive package to bring us to the state," he said, adding that Kentucky also sits in the middle of "auto alley," where many of the auto suppliers are located.

The incentive package includes around $100,000 for employee training, a rebate on sales tax for the material used to build the facility, and a rebate on payroll taxes, layered with corporate taxes over a 15-year period, he said. 

Agnew said the company is in the process of transitioning its personnel and operations from its former headquarters in Glenns Ferry, Idaho, where it had a 90,000-square-foot R&D facility, to Williamsburg. The move is expected to completed by October 2009.

The private company makes its mini G-1 plug-in electric vehicle, an electric SUV called the G-2, and most recently a plug-in hybrid truck, the G-3, which it unveiled earlier in the week. The G-3 starts at around $25,000, but the price does not include government incentives.

The G-3 can travel about 100 miles on a single full recharge, which the company says costs about $1. The highway-legal vehicle, which can go 100 mph, is powered by advanced nickel-based batteries, rather than lithium-based ones.

Global Green Cars plans to produce its first stage vehicles in 2010 in a 48,000-square-foot temporary facility in Kentucky, and would scale up to mass production in 2011 in a new 160,000-square-foot facility as demand increases for its electric vehicles.

Green Star Products, which makes sustainable goods and renewable resources such as biofuels, holds a minority stake in Global Green Cars. 

Santa Rosa, Calif.-based ZAP has also said it is developing a new manufacturing facility in Kentucky to produce highway-speed electric trucks and sedans (see New $25M financing to drive ZAP’s EU expansion and ZAP: Low price, not top speed, drives electric vehicle market).

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