Brazilian billionaire plans $1B electric vehicle facility with 100,000 unit annual capacity — Autoblog Green

Brazilian billionaire plans $1B electric vehicle facility with 100,000 unit annual capacity — Autoblog Green

When you're ranked by Forbes as the world's eighth richest person, then spending a mere one billion dollars to build an electric vehicle (EV) factory in Rio de Janeiro is probably akin to us more common folk digging some coins out of the couch cushions and using that change to get some gas. Or, at least something close to that effect.

This is the plan of Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista, who believes that the production facility could be completed in four year's time and then be capable of pumping out 100,000 EVs per year. But Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is not keen on electric cars. President Silva questions whether EVs can be produced on a commercial level that will profit both the automakers and the nation. Silva's skepticism may be partially due to the nation's booming biofuel industry and strong promotion for flex-fuel cars. While Batista asserts that a profit will be realized, Brazil, like other democratic countries, is not solely run by powerful billionaires and the EV production facility's fate ultimately lies in the hands of the powerful few. But if it's given the nod, then Batista's vision to produce, "a domestically made car with foreign know-how, from Europe and Japan" could become a reality in just a few years.