A European sports car-maker says it will manufacture small electric vehicles in Columbus. Venturi Automibiles executives today (Friday) outlined their plans. WOSU's Tom Borgerding reports.
Venturi President Gildo Pastor says Columbus is a good place to design and build specialty electric vehicles.
"There's expertise here and there's very interesting companies also in Ohio in general so that's positive for a future business here."
Venturi is already a partner with Ohio State's Center for Automotive Research. But. its new plans call for design, engineering and production of electric vehicles used in urban settings. The new company, Venturi North America will be headed by John Pohill. He says production plans are still being developed.
"It could be a motor assembly facility to start out with, actually assembling electric motors for sale here in the States. And then to go from there to building the three-wheel small deliveries or the police-style staff vehicles that they use for ticketing and those kind of things.
Pohill says the new company will hire about 70 employees within two years.
"And as we build this business and look at the possibilities I think growth here is going to affect a lot of other things and I think there'll be a lot of other small businesses spin off of this."
Venturi's announcement comes the same week that Governor John Kasich said the Big Three complained to him that Ohio was non-competitive. Kasich characterized the automakers private comments as sobering and disturbing. Venturi President Pastor says Governor Kasich also met with his company during a visit to the Detroit Auto show.
"He did visited the big guys, but, you know, he came and shake hands and listened to us and understand what was going to be our future, check how many jobs we were going to create."
Pastor says eventually Venturi Automobiles' American company wants to engineer and produce a variety of electric vehicles ranging from small utility vehicles to luxury cars. The start-up company will be headquartered at Tech Columbus on Kinnear Road.