KQED visits Green Vehicles' Triac plant in Salinas to explore manufacturing in California

We're pleased that KQED featured Green Vehicles on The California Report, January 25, 2011, exploring the future of local manufacturing. The piece features Green Vehicles president Mike Ryan and City of Salinas mayor Dennis Donohue, commenting on why it makes sense to manufacture locally and how cities like Salinas are attracting industry.

What was Green Vehicles up to in 2010?

Happy New Year from Green Vehicles!

The turn of the year is traditionally a time to take stock of where we’ve been and where we’re going, which seems to us like a darn good idea for individuals and companies alike. In 2010, we focused on designing the future of our company and products, while perhaps putting too little effort into updating our friends, fans, and allies. Let’s fix that! After all, these are exciting times for Green Vehicles, and we want to bring you up to speed.

The “Great Recession” has had a profound effect on most of us and our businesses. Green Vehicles also had to weather the times and make prudent choices in order to grow, develop product, and ramp up production at pace commensurate with this challenging period. However, the overwhelming interest and support for the Triac has successfully brought us through, as did our team’s dedication to our mission.

In 2010, our exciting news is that Green Vehicles was one of the few U.S. companies that did deliver EVs to our customers. The company was one of the few recipients of grant support for expansion by the state of California. We maxed out our initial production capacity, thanks to customer demand generated almost entirely from YouTube and our website, which might be a historical first for any vehicle maker. With vehicles on the road, we gathered feedback from the first batch of Triac experts (aka, our customers) and have been integrating that information into design improvements for the Triac2.0, shipping in 2011.

Green Vehicles also moved into our 80,000 square-foot manufacturing facility in Salinas, California, securing enough space to meet our growth for several years. Recently, we announced our partnership with battery-supplier Leyden Energy, maker of high energy-density battery solutions perfect for light-weight automotive applications like the Triac.

In 2011, you will see not only a new automaker taking shape, but a new kind of automaker. Green Vehicles will introduce the auto industry to greater transparency, local production (utilizing our ‘micro-factory’ approach), and unique ‘clean commuter’ technology. Watch (literally) as we broadcast Green Vehicles installing a several-thousand-vehicle-per-year production line. Evaluate our environmental performance for yourself as we track (for better or for worse) our progress toward a modern, sustainable operation and report the results on our ‘Sustainability Dashboard.’

As our first California-made Triac2.0 clean commuter vehicles come off the line, you will learn about our customers with fun podcasts we will call “I drive a Triac, what about it?!” We expect the first customers who reserve a Triac will receive delivery of their vehicle by the end of 2011.

2010 saw big changes in the EV market as a whole. Major automakers are entering the EV market and lending mainstream legitimacy to electrification. Discussion of EVs has moved out of the fringes. And EV charging infrastructure has become a hot topic for governments preparing themselves for the revolution in transportation. With the Leaf and Volt coming to market, some people have argued that smaller makers such as Green Vehicles or Tesla may not be able to compete. This argument doesn’t hold water, and we will give you the opportunity to chime in through a series of podcast discussions, first of which will be “Why major auto OEMs are not structured for success in the battery electric vehicle space, and why you should care.”

Thank you for your continued interest in Green Vehicles. Here’s to an exciting ride in 2011.