Concord and Cabarrus County are positioned well for the future development of an electric vehicle manufacturing plant with recent investments in the area including the $100 million Celgard manufacturing plant, which will produce lithium battery separators used in electric vehicles.
Celgard broke ground Thursday on its 150,000-square-foot plant on 20 acres in the International Business Park in Concord. Celgard officials have said they will create more than 200 jobs at the plant and more than 1,000 jobs through the company's contractors and suppliers. Celgard plans to open the new plant in one year.
Concord also is home to SBM Solar, Inc., a company making the world's only UL-certified non-glass solar panels, which are light and pliable enough to be used on electric vehicles. The company recently started working with Vision Motor Cars, Inc., an electric vehicle manufacturing startup, to develop panels that will be used in the company's vehicles.
The third piece of the puzzle is real estate that could house a large-scale vehicle manufacturing plant. Concord has that, too. The vacant Philip Morris plant on U.S. 29 in Concord would be an ideal location to build electric cars, said Brooks Agnew, President and CEO of Vision Motor Cars, Inc.
"It would be a wonderful place to manufacture cars," said Agnew, who has developed manufacturing facilities from General Motors and other car manufacturers. "We need about 600,000 square feet."
The Philip Morris property is 3.5 million-square-feet, according to the Cabarrus Economic Development Corporation. The EDC is marketing the vacant plant to prospective investors.
"That certainly would be a most appropriate application for the Philip Morris plant," said John Cox, president and CEO of the Cabarrus EDC and the Cabarrus Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Cox said a key to successful economic development is the clustering of related businesses. Cox would not comment on prospects for the manufacturing plant.
Celgard supplies separators to lithium-ion battery manufacturers whose battery packs are in multiple electric drive vehicles on the road now and others that will be launched between now and 2013.
"We've established an attractive position in the electric vehicle industry," said Robert Toth, CEO of Polypore International Inc., Celgardís parent company. "Even very modest growth in the electric drive vehicle market creates tremendous growth in the lithium battery separator demand."
The United States has been working to increase its position in the global electric drive vehicle industry, according to federal officials who attended the groundbreaking for Celgard Thursday.
The U.S. Department of Energy gave Celgard a $49 million grant through its Electric Drive Vehicle Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
"The Department of Energy is working to reduce our dependency on foreign oil," said Edwin Owens, U.S. Department of Energy Supervisor of Hybrid Electric Systems and Materials Technology, Vehicle Technology Programs.
"We believe the electric vehicle industry is an important component in reducing the 11 million gallons of oil per day we import and in decreasing the $850 million a day we export for that oil," Owens said.
Owens added that the Department of Energy has invested $2.4 billion to help jumpstart the electric vehicle industry in the United States. With the expansion of Celgard in Concord and Charlotte and other investments throughout the country, the U.S. will produce about 20 percent of the world's advanced batteries by 2012.
Agnew said the federal government could generate more jobs by also investing in small businesses, like his, that are trying to build affordable electric drive vehicles in the United States.
"For $49 million, I could put 1,000 people to work and we would be producing 250,000 electric vehicles per year and I could do it in six months," said Agnew, who has 40,000 orders for his electric trucks, which he plans to manufacture in Kentucky.
Agnew also has designs for three electric cars, which he said he eventually wants to manufacture in the Charlotte area. Agnew said he and U.S. Rep. Larry Kissell, a Democrat serving North Carolina's 8th District, will meet with Washington and White House officials next week to discuss expanding grant programs to small businesses.
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