By Eric Bradner, Evansville Courier & Press
INDIANAPOLIS - State officials' vision of Indiana becoming the hub of a blossoming electric-vehicle industry inched closer to reality Thursday when EnerDel, a rapidly growing lithium battery maker, announced plans to expand.
It was the latest in a growing line of companies - four in the last month - that produce parts for electric vehicles to commit to planting roots in the state.
Taken together, Gov. Mitch Daniels said, the announcements demonstrate Indiana's status as a future location for an industry that simultaneously promotes clean energy and energy independence.
"I've become an enthusiast about electric vehicles and what they can mean to our nation's future, the world's environment and economy, but specifically to the economy of our state," he said Thursday.
The best part: "There are more coming," said Mitch Roob, Indiana's secretary of commerce.
Soon, he said, companies spanning from Elkhart to the Crane warfare center in Southwestern Indiana will produce parts for electric vehicles.
Roob said he could not discuss developments at Crane, but said future announcements will involve "some really neat stuff."
Roob, Daniels and others said Indiana is situated ideally to house such an industry.
Although momentum within America's largest automakers stalled out when electric vehicles were in their earliest stages, engineers who worked for the Big Three - Ford, General Motors and Chrysler - spun off the technology in hopes that it would catch on.
"Over time, those people who happened to live in Indiana kept working on it, they kept perfecting it, they kept getting better," Roob said.
Now that electric vehicle technology has advanced enough, those long-quiet innovators here are emerging.
"It's getting noticed all of a sudden, but it's been here for three decades or more," Roob said of Indiana's electric vehicle potential. "This isn't new to Indiana. Indiana is just recognizing that we've had this all along."
Among the other reasons:
Lithium batteries weigh 600 pounds, even though they aren't much bigger than those in most cars right now. Moving them is expensive, and Indiana's highway network cuts shipping costs.
Indiana isn't out of the way. It's between Detroit and auto-industry production facilities in the South.
"We're very attuned to the (electric vehicle) industry," Roob said. "We've spent a lot of time with them and have tried to make Indiana welcoming and responsible to their needs."
EnerDel, a subsidiary of New York-based Ener1, makes lithium-ion batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles. Its new plant, located in a 423,000-square-foot building in Hancock County, just east of Indianapolis, will employ 500 people, company officials said.
To lure the company, which previously had announced the expansion of its Indianapolis operation as well as a new assembly center in Noblesville, Hancock County put together a $30 million incentive package, most of it in tax abatements. Meanwhile, the Indiana Economic Development Corp., headed by Roob, is adding more than $20 million in incentives.
Some of the credit for Indiana's growth in the electric vehicle industry goes to President Barack Obama's $787 billion federal stimulus package.
The cost of the facility EnerDel announced Thursday will be covered in part through a $118.5 million federal matching grant, said Charles Gassenheimer, the top executive for Ener1. That grant was one of seven in Indiana, totaling $416 million, that Obama announced in August during a visit to Wakarusa in northern Indiana.
"Here we have an industry that is so beautifully suited to the skill sets and work experience of so many Hoosiers," Daniels said Thursday, standing alongside Gassenheimer. "Here before your eyes you can see the transition that any economy has to make on an ongoing basis - from one industry to the next, from one set of economic activities to the next."
Jesse Kharbanda, the executive director of the Hoosier Environmental Council, often spars with the Daniels administration at the intersection of economic and environmental policy. But he applauded EnerDel's announcement, calling the governor's focus on the industry "a very good thing."
"I think it's a good indicator that the governor acknowledges the significant economic potential of clean-energy technologies."
Still, while electric vehicles would reduce oil consumption, Kharbanda noted, backing clean-burning cars isn't enough. It must be part of a statewide charge toward renewable energy, he said.
"Particularly in Indiana, the batteries will be charged and powered by coal. I think the complete fulfillment of a truly green electric vehicle vision is one in which we're also stepping up our diversification toward nonfossil fuel technologies."