plus 3, Eltra Technologies moving to Nevada - Effingham Daily News

Eltra Technologies moving to Nevada - Effingham Daily News
Putting energy in the right place - Goshen News
Bike Week Begins In Daytona Beach - News Channel 2000
Beaudry RV Company Protects Consumers with Specialized RV Insurance - YAHOO!

Eltra Technologies moving to Nevada - Effingham Daily News

Posted: 26 Feb 2010 08:08 AM PST

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Published: February 26, 2010 08:00 am

Eltra Technologies moving to Nevada

Bill Grimes
Effingham Daily News

EFFINGHAM — Ron Johnson had high hopes for his business prospects when he moved to Effingham in 1994.

Johnson, an electrical engineer by trade, has spent a number of years trying to develop an electric or hybrid car through his Eltra Technologies. But the Las Vegas native says it's time to go home.

"We've talked to everybody we can talk to," Johnson said. "We're closing the company and moving it to Nevada.

"Everybody loves what we are doing, but nobody is interested in getting involved."

Johnson founded Eltra in 1998. His initial project involved converting a Saturn sedan into a hybrid, that is, a car that uses both gasoline and electricity to operate. But just as the company was getting off the ground, federal funding for alternative-fuel vehicles dried up with the election of former oilman George W. Bush to the Presidency in 2000.

After several years of dormancy, Johnson tried to re-start Eltra in 2007, but was stymied by the stock market collapse that occurred the following year.

Then the Progressive insurance company offered $10 million to the first company that could develop a car that could travel 100 miles on one gallon of gasoline.

Out of 111 entries, Eltra was one of 43 teams to pass the technical design phase of the Progressive competition. That was last August, and Johnson hoped the recognition would stimulate financial backing for his ideas.

It hasn't happened in Effingham, he said.

"We did have the backing of one local party to help get us started on our car, but they backed out in early December," he said. As a result, Eltra had to bow out of the competition for lack of funding.

Johnson said he would like to convert a Ford Fusion into a car that can get 140 miles per gallon.

"We also plan to manufacture inverters and hybrid drive systems as well convert late model vehicles into cars that could get 80 miles per gallon," he said. "We also plan to target niche markets like electric boats, ATVs, lawn mowers, semi-tractors and RV's.

"We could have easily created 50-plus new jobs within the first two years, but nobody is interested," he said.

But Effingham city economic development director Todd Hull said city officials perceived Eltra as more of a research and development company that would create relatively few jobs. As a result, he said, Eltra was ineligible for most economic development programs handled locally, such as tax increment financing districts or enterprise zones.

"We talked to him and we thought he had a great idea," Hull said. "Our problem is that the city can't invest in R&D."

Hull did say city officials tried to generate interest in Eltra by potential investors.

Johnson, 53, had developed meters for the gaming industry for several years in the 80s and 90s. Along the way, he developed an interest in automotive design, particularly those that use alternative fuels. But Las Vegas in the 1990s wasn't the place to jump-start any type of manufacturing industry.

"When we sold our business in 1993, we walked away with about $1 million," he said. "We were tired and wanted to slow down. Plus, Vegas wasn't receptive to manufacturing at that time."

But Johnson said that attitude has changed.

"They've got a new mayor and they're trying to develop a green enterprise zone," he said.

While Johnson is going back to his hometown, he's not happy about it.

"I did not want to go back to Vegas," he said. "I like the four seasons, as well as grass and trees.

"But I'm at a point where I have to move."

Johnson still believes the area is ideal for automotive development.

"We are so centrally located," he said. "Most of the automobile industry is within 800 miles of us."

Bill Grimes can be reached at 217-347-7151 ext. 132 or bill.grimes@effinghamdailynews.com.

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Putting energy in the right place - Goshen News

Posted: 26 Feb 2010 07:26 AM PST

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Published: February 26, 2010 10:17 am

Putting energy in the right place

Can Elkhart County lead the way in 'green' manufacturing jobs?

By Roger Schneider
THE GOSHEN NEWS

The trend to build energy-efficient vehicles and get more energy from alternative sources may help diversify Elkhart County's manufacturing base. But it will take time and is not a sure thing.

Those are the opinions of an economist, a business professor and others who have been watching the local economy.

With government loans and incentives in hand, two electric-vehicle companies will soon begin making products in the county. A third company is expected to unveil a prototype e-vehicle in April and continue to seek partnerships to begin producing it. And a turbine company is working to perfect its products to produce energy from existing dams and pipelines.

With these new ventures can Elkhart County become a high-tech center in the Midwest? Will it become the Detroit of the electric-vehicle industry?

"I don't know if that would be possible, but I think we could have a lot to do with it," said Wakarusa Town Manager Tom Roeder.

The small town of 1,700 people is home to two of the electric-vehicle projects. Navastar's plant is there and the company plans to build 400 electric-drive delivery trucks.

The Electric Motors Corp. has opened its office in the former Monaco Coach headquarters. That company has an electric-gasoline hybrid engine it is attempting to place in pickup trucks through partnerships with Gulf Stream Coach and other companies.

"There has been a lot of talk," Roeder said. "The president has come to Wakarusa. There has been a lot of attention. But right now, neither (EMC or Navistar) is producing any electric vehicles."

Navistar officials would not comment, but a spokesman said the company is planning to make a positive announcement about the truck plans in a couple of months.

Prototype coming

EMC intends to unveil a prototype pickup upfitted with its hybrid drive at the New York Auto Show in April.

"There is a lot of activity going on," said Linda Yoder, vice president of government affairs for EMC. "We still have connections in California and they are working on things for us."

Yoder said the prototype was recently in Michigan at an engineering company for assessment.

EMC has undergone a leadership change recently. Former chief executive officer Wil Cashen, who promoted the company to the public and politicians in 2009 with the promise of local job creation, was replaced with Ralph King. King, the financial officer for the company, is serving as interim CEO.

Early this month, Frank Jenkins was hired as president. The former GM manager of sales promotions and partnerships is bullish on the future of electric vehicles in general and the Wakarusa-based EMC hybrid-drive pickup in particular.

"The thing that intrigued me foremost about it is, we are talking about pickup trucks because that market is huge," Jenkins said. "The ability to address fuel economy in that market is very intriguing and the way they (EMC) are doing it is intriguing, also."

The EMC drive system uses a series of electric motors mounted in-line behind a small gasoline engine. That engine can be used to power the pickup or recharge the batteries, which extend the mileage rating for a pickup.

High mileage

Jenkins said that with the EMC system vehicles can get between 40 and 100 miles per gallon.

"It is a plug-in, but you don't have to plug-it in," he said. "You can rely on the internal combustion engine to recharge. What that does is allow you to get the 40 miles per gallon. But if you plug it in more often, you are not relying on the engine to recharge the battery and you can get 100 mpg. So, it is the best of both worlds."

The company plans to create two prototypes, the "Flash" and the "Thunderbolt." The Flash will be a consumer product and the Thunderbolt a commercial product. Jenkins wants to have 350 Thunderbolts produced in partnership with Gulf Stream and market them to fleet operators.

"The fleet market is very adept folks," Jenkins said. "They know the cost of ownership of a vehicle. They not only look at the initial cost, but the life cycle cost."

There are tax incentives for fleet operators to reduce the amount of gasoline their fleets use, according to Jenkins. That incentive may push electric-vehicle sales, and thus help Elkhart County manufacturers sell their e-vehicles.

"In Elkhart and Wakarusa, the traditional business model is there to upfit vehicles," Jenkins said. "Our model right now is similar. Instead of a dump body or stake body, our upfit is the drive system."

We still make things

Manufacturing is still the dominant sector in Elkhart County, according to Grant Black, a professor of economics at Indiana University at South Bend.

He said before the recession swept away jobs, about 50 percent of the county's economy was based on manufacturing. But the downturn reduced manufacturing to 41.3 percent of the local economy.

"The addition of the companies related to electric vehicle manufacturing mainly add to the overall manufacturing sector," Black said. "While they diversify the manufacturing base, they do not directly lead to much diversification of the entire industrial base.

"It is also unclear what their true impact on employment will be given that their demand for workers will not be high right away and depends on the demand for their products in the long term."

However, the addition of these companies could provide diversification away from the dominance of the RV industry, he said. That could be beneficial to the local economy by helping to support different suppliers and types of workers.

The projects

One of the electric-vehicle companies is Think Global, a company based in Oslo, Norway. The company intends to open a factory in Elkhart County this year to produce its Think City all-electric vehicle in early 2011. Getting some of its financing from the Department of Energy, Think will invest $43.5 million to improve the vacant Philips Products plant at 1000 Sako Court, east of C.R. 13 and south of Middlebury Street in Elkhart.

Along with the DOE funding, Think will be given a 10-year property tax phase-in by the city of Elkhart.

Navistar, based in Warrenville, Ill., manufactures buses and trucks. Its plant in Wakaursa customizes truck chassis with delivery-truck bodies. That plant has been chosen to produce 400 electric-drive delivery trucks in the coming year.

Navistar has partnered with Modec of Coventry, England, in the venture. Modec has been building electric-drive trucks that can carry two tons of cargo for the European market since 2007. The company is small, with about 70 employees, but has the jump on technology that can be used to produce e-vehicles in the United States quickly. With the incentives offered for e-vehicles in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the earlier Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program, companies are moving to cash in on those subsidies.

Lucid Energy Technologies

Far removed from the vehicle industry is a small start-up company in Goshen. In the roomy upstairs space on Washington Street that once housed the youth club in Goshen in the 1960s, a handful of young workers spend their days engineering unique turbines.

"It all came about through research and testing," said Josh Thomas, program manager for Lucid Energy Technologies.

The company spun off from the former Terra Group company, but has since been sold to Vigor Clean Tech of Ontario, Canada.

Lucid employees are working to create efficient non-traditional turbines. Their concept products are made of polished aluminium and shine in the light from the north windows in the office. One turbine resembles an eggbeater, the other, a globe made by twisting slats that meet at each pole.

To test one of the turbines, the company placed it in the Little Elkhart River at Bonneyville Mill Park.

"It worked great and it told us what we needed to know," Thomas said.

The test revealed changes need to be made to how the turbine blades are aligned, he said.

The globe-like turbine is designed to be placed inside pipelines that carry liquids. The turbine would be placed where the liquid is flowing downhill and would spin and produce power through a coupling carrying a shaft to the outside of the pipeline.

Goshen residents may be able to see one of the turbines soon. The company has initial approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to place a turbine at the tailgate of the Goshen hydraulic canal. That turbine will be placed at the end of a water-directing pipe and generate electricity.

The company is still negotiating with the city government for placement of the turbine.

Thomas said he thinks it is interesting that the new-age company was a spin-off of an old-time county RV industry. Lucid was established in the county because "everything needed was here," Thomas said.

The initial plan was to produce the aluminium turbines at The Mill, a metal manufacturing company in Goshen. That company has since gone out of business. Now, the prototype one-of-a-kind turbines are manufactured in Wisconsin, according to Thomas. But the steel fabricating for the turbines is done in Goshen.

Not there yet

The trio of e-vehicle companies want to, or will, invest many millions of dollars to produce electric vehicles here. But so far, this seachange away from RV manufacturing in the county, remains in the planning stages.

"The governor says we might become the electric car company leader of the country," said Goshen Chamber of Commerce President David Daughtery, referring to Gov. Mitch Daniels' comments he made during the announcement for the Think Car plant.

"We've said we're out to make Indiana the electric vehicle state," Daniels said at the January announcement. "It's beginning to look like the state capital will be Elkhart County."

Daugherty said the county has a work force that is skilled in manufacturing, especially in the vehicle industry.

"It allows things like Think to happen," he said.

How to do it?

"The simple answer is 'yes,' we should diversify our local economy," said Jon Geiser, business professor at Goshen College. "Any time that you have a majority of your productive eggs in one basket, you run the risk of deep economic fluctuations."

Geiser said the RV industry will always be important to the local economy and will recover. That segment of our economy will also be vulnerable to future downturns, he said.

"The difficult answer is into what areas should we diversify?" he said.

There are some promising technologies being explored as potential candidates, such as nanotechnology (at the University of Notre Dame) and renewable energy technologies relating to the production of electric vehicles and to wind and water power generation. These are exciting prospects, Geiser said, and should be pursued.

"However, the process of diversifying an economy is complex and requires broad-spectrum planning with a long-term approach," he said. "Developing the appropriate supporting infrastructure must be considered in the plans, everything from the education and training of the required work force, to the attractiveness of the community in order to persuade companies and employees to settle here.

"The good news is that some of this planning is already beginning to take shape through organizations, such as the Horizon 2.0 project, and work being carried out by the local Chambers of Commerce and the Economic Development Corp. of Elkhart County." z

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Bike Week Begins In Daytona Beach - News Channel 2000

Posted: 26 Feb 2010 03:01 AM PST

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POSTED: 6:05 am EST February 26, 2010
UPDATED: 7:27 pm EST February 26, 2010

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Beaudry RV Company Protects Consumers with Specialized RV Insurance - YAHOO!

Posted: 25 Feb 2010 09:46 PM PST

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JACKIESUE buzzed up: Chris Rock, Maxwell win at NAACP Image Awards (AP)

4 seconds ago 2010-02-26T21:15:05-08:00

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