Editor's Note: This was originally posted on the Department of Transportation's blog.
Yesterday, Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff and I toured the Greenville, South Carolina, bus manufacturing plant of Proterra, Inc. And I don't think you could find a better demonstration of the American innovation President Obama invoked in his State of the Union address Tuesday night.
When the President said that America's small businesses need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build their competition, he must have had Proterra in mind.
Employees at Proterra, Inc., in Greenville, South Carolina.
In 2009, Proterra did not have the financial resources or customer orders to commercialize its fast charge battery bus and charging station. Although FTA grants had helped support the company's fuel-cell research, they were unable to grow from a research and development company into an assembly line manufacturer of high technology vehicles.
But with help from Department of Transportation grants to transit agencies across the country, Proterra has been able to make that leap.
Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/01/28/winning-future-proterra-style
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