Bloomberg is reporting that the Chinese owner of the former GM Boxwood Plant near Newport plans to open an electric car plant in that nation
Wanxiang plans to build 50,000 vehicles at the proposed plant. The site in China would be much smaller than the Boxwood site, which at its height produced hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year.
Wanxiang, which has its U.S. headquarters near Chicago is a large auto parts maker with worldwide sales of $20 billion. The company builds electric buses in China.
At one point, New Castle County Executive Thomas Gordon floated the idea of buying the site to avoid the seeing the property become retail space. Wanxiang has not ruled out building cars at the site, but there has been no activity in the past couple of years.
The company ended up with Boxwood after buying up assets of defunct Fisker Automotive out of U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Delaware. It also purchased the assets of Fisker’s battery supplier out of Bankruptcy Court.
Fisker had planned to build a mid-sized plug-in hybrid known as the Atlantic at Boxwood. The plug-in hybrid uses a small gasoline engine, as well as electric motors that are powered by batteries and the engine.
Wanxiang has been working to upgrade the Karma, which suffered from battery and other problems, during its short production run. The car company now operates under the name Karma Automotive.
Wanxiang also plans to build a version of the former Fisker Karma at a plant in southern California, with the plant in China building the Atlantic and the Karma.
The State of Delaware invested $20 million in the Boxwood plant, with the U.S. Department of Energy investing several times that amount before suspending the loan. Most of the money from that loan was not recovered.
