Interesting news this morning from Terry McAuliffe’s GreenTech Automotive:
Terence R. McAuliffe, Chairman of Greentech Automotive (GTA), announced that GTA has acquired EuAuto Technology Ltd., a Hong Kong-based award-winning company that specializes in the design, manufacturing, and worldwide distribution of Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEV).
The announcement comes during US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke’s Clean Energy Trade Mission in Hong Kong and during World Trade Week. EuAuto now becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of GTA. The addition of EuAuto’s NEV to GTA’s product line extends its current family of energy efficient automobiles into even more affordable niche markets and will enable American families to purchase this electric car as early as 2011. EuAuto’s electric vehicle, MyCar, was named electric vehicle of the year at the 2008 European GreenFleet Awards.
GTA plans to create thousands of “green collar” jobs across Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia. At full production, GTA will create over 4,000 new US jobs. The acquisition of EuAuto will bring an additional 300 jobs to the US.
“GTA stands with the Obama administration in reaffirming a commitment to economic recovery and growth,” said McAuliffe. “We will continue to expand green collar job creation, which is central to our mission to build energy efficient, affordable automobiles in the US.”
In congratulating GTA on its acquisition of EuAuto, Secretary Locke said, “Transactions such as this one are truly win-win: they bolster the U.S. economy and speed our economic recovery; they support high-quality, high-wage green jobs in the United States; they help rebuild our manufacturing sector; and, by leading to lower carbon emissions, they contribute to our ability to deal with climate change.”
By the way, GTA’s motto is “no green technology is truly green unless it is affordably green.” There’s a lot of truth to that, which is a major reason why we need to correct egregious market failures so that “externalities” are incorporated into the price of fossil fuels. In addition, of course, we also need to correct flawed government policies which act to artificially hold down the price of polluting fuels relative to clean, renewable sources of power. As a result of both failures – market and government policy – fossil fuels are far cheaper than their fully “internalized” price would suggest. That’s definitely not the way to go if we want to make “green technology…affordably green.”
P.S. Wouldn’t it be ironic if this business deal by “liberal” Terry McAuliffe ended up bringing more jobs to Virginia than “conservative” Bob McDonnell’s much-touted bribing courting, via government handouts/corporate welfare, of Northrop Grumman?
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