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A Cascade of Plug-In Efficiencies
By KATE GALBRAITH
NEW YORK — With the first big wave of modern electric cars due to arrive in the next few years, the battle to attract manufacturing plants is heating up.
Last week, Reva, an Indian maker of electric cars, announced that it planned to open an assembly plant in Upstate New York to build a three-door plug-in hatchback called the NXR, in partnership with a local company.
New York officials welcomed the decision as a recognition of the state’s emerging battery-technology cluster and manufacturing skill.
“I believe the competition was between New York State and Michigan, and we won,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a telephone interview last week.
More plant announcements are expected soon in the United States.
Fisker Automotive, a California-based startup that is making the first of its high-end plug-ins in Finland, could name the site for a planned American plant this week. Tesla, maker of the Roadster, a stylish and expensive plug-in, may soon announce where in Southern California it will locate the factory for its next car, the Model S.
Tesla already does final assembly for the Roadsters — almost 900 of which are already being driven in the United States — in Menlo Park, California.
As with conventionally powered vehicles, manufacturers give priority to locations that are close to their consumers.
Jeffrey Leonard, a board member of Reva who lives in the Washington area, said in a telephone interview last week that Reva’s board had understood from the beginning that “if you’re going to really sell and distribute this car in a big way in the U.S., you should have a production facility here,” for logistical and political reasons.
Conventional automakers — most of which are racing to produce their own electric cars — are retooling existing plants to make the new vehicles. Here again, the preference goes to plants close to where the cars will be sold.
“As a matter of practice, we try to manufacture vehicles in the markets where they will be marketed,” Fred Standish, a spokesman for Nissan North America, said in an e-mail message. Nissan will begin making its electric car, the Leaf, at an existing facility in Oppama, Japan, next year. It will be sold in the United States and Japan, beginning late in 2010, Mr. Standish said. Starting in late 2012, the Leaf will be made in Tennessee as well as in Japan, he said.
Manufacturing vehicles near their ultimate markets, Mr. Standish said, has benefits that include “reduced exposure to foreign exchange fluctuations, elimination of import taxes, elimination of transoceanic transportation costs and reduction of delivery time.”
Unsurprisingly, Asia hopes to
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