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Obama Announces Grant for Navistar Plants PDF Print E-mail
Wednesday, 05 August 2009 00:00
WAKARUSA, Ind.  — On a day when it was announced that $2.4 billion in federal grants were being awarded to develop electric batteries, President Obama appeared at Navistar’s new RV plant to announce that the company will receive $39 million in governement funds to manufacture battery-powered vehicles with a 12,100-pound gross vehicle and a range of 100 miles.

The plant is located in the Elkhart-Goshen metropolitan area that has been hard-hit by unemployment figures that have grown to nearly 19 percent from nearly 5 percent at the end of 2007.

The RV industry has been especially affected by the current recession as disposable income for such purchases have become a thing of the past. But the grant announced Wednesday is aimed at helping build the 400 all-electric trucks next year, and the grant application calls for the creation of up to 700 jobs, which includes Navistar employees and suppliers. Navistar added in a statement on its Web site that, within a couple of years, it expects to eventually manufacture several thousand of these vehicles each year.

Navistar has three manufacturing facilities in the area: the Monaco RV facility in Wakarusa, Ind., another facility recently purchased from Monaco in Elkhart City, Ind., and the Workhorse Custom Chassis facility in Union City, Ind. The company also is heading into it’s third year of manufacturing a hybrid electric plug-in school bus through it’s subsidiary IC Bus. The bus was on display for President Obama along side the hybrid International DuraStar, the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle and the International Husky Tactical Support Vehicle (TSV).

While school buses specifically weren't mentioned in a four-page list released by the White House describing project to be funded by the $2.4  billion in grants, several familiar names were present. Included were: Allison Transmission for increasing U.S. capacity to manufacture hybrid systems for the commercial truck market; BASF Catalysts for developing Lithium-ion batteries; Ford for electric vehicles and drive trains; GM for battery packs and new electric vehicles and rear-wheel electric drive systems; and the South Coast Air Quality Management District in Southern California for developing a fully integrated, production plug-in hybrid system for Class 2 through 5 vehicles and demonstrating a fleet of 378 trucks and shuttle buses.
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