Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) We’ll take our first question from Bob Ecinder - Garden State.
Bob Ecinder - Garden State
A question, Bob; I know that you’re working with Smith Electric Vehicle, and they have announced that they are going to be building a facility in the US to build hybrid electric delivery vans in coordination with Ford. My understanding is that we are the battery of choice for that van. Is that correct?
Robert Kanode
That is correct. Smith talks of speaking and working with many other battery suppliers, but in reality, we are the only company that’s capable of delivering systems to them as we speak and have done so and in fact, those products that they’re planning on manufacturing in the United States will have our battery systems in them, and they have approached us and have asked us about putting a plant in the US and we are looking at our options to do that.
Bob Ecinder - Garden State
Excellent. Okay, well to that end, I also have read that a company called Magna is working with Ford, and they are anticipating developing in coordination with Ford, hybrid plug-in electric vehicles in the US as well. Can you comment on Magna and if you are involved with them or they are one of the 105 companies you may have shipped batteries to?
Robert Kanode
First of all, as far as Magna is concerned, I was with them two weeks ago and second, a lot of people don’t understand Magna and Magna is a truly impressive corporation. The way you should think of them is, they are probably the largest manufacturer/assembler of cars outside of the majors and their business model is the following:
If one of the major manufacturers has less than usually 50,000 units, they will put that assembly operation in Magna, because it’s simply not enough volume to run on their high speed lines. So as you walk through their facility in Austria which we did last week, you will notice they are making things like Jeep product for Europe, they’re making BMW SUVs for Europe, they make Mercedes SUVs for Europe and they make things like all the brag costs, convertibles, world-wide they make.
So they are a very efficient manufacturer of low to medium volume and as far as I know all of the majors use them, even Chrysler has used them to manufacture the Chrysler 300 when it was sold in Europe and very popular when it was first launched two or three years ago. So, Magna will definitely be a player here. They have very deep technology in EVs and we’re very interested in continuing to work with them.
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