Green Options

After a long process of on-again, off-again pseudo confirmations of potential sites, Norwegian EV company Th!nk has officially chosen Elkhart, Indiana, as the location of its U.S. electric car manufacturing facility. For a company that, as recently as a year ago, was swirling in the flushed toilet bowl of failed EV startups, this marks a major turning point.

Update 11/19/2009, 9:00 AM Pacific Time: According to Th!nk’s Twitter feed, Indiana has not been officially chosen, saying “We’re moving toward completing our US site selection — but it will take another week or two to finalize the location. Stay tuned…” Apparently other states, such as Oregon, are still in the running. Whether this is a genius marketing ploy to increase interest, or simply a misstep by Ener1, we’ll have to wait and see.

Norwegian electric car maker, Th!nk, has seen some rough financial patches as of late—having gone through a bankruptcy and restructuring—but they seem to be clawing their way back to relevance these days. With a long wait list and more demand for the Th!nk City than they can meet in Europe, think has once again turned their eyes on the U.S. market.

In conjunction with the advanced technologies DOE loans that EnerDel has applied for to fund increased battery production capacity, Gassenheimer is now looking at setting up Th!nk City production in the U.S. as early as 2010.”