After five years in Greenville, electric bus maker Proterra is moving is headquarters to Silicon Valley, but the decision had more to do with workforce needs and customers than capital problems in South Carolina, according to a company representative.
“With the presence of Tesla, Apple, Google and the R&D labs of the major automotive manufacturers in Silicon Valley, it is an area Proterra feels it needs a serious presence in to remain at the cutting edge of electric vehicle development,” Proterra Vice President of Sales Matt Horton told the Upstate Business Journal. “The move, however, is unrelated to the availability of investment capital.”
The company’s relocation to Burlingame, Calif., follows Proterra’s announcement earlier this year of plans to build a 160,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in southern California. The facility is expected to double production capacity in three years, and will more efficiently serve west coast customers.
Proterra customers include municipalities in the Southeast – including those in South Carolina – as well as many in California. The company is also working with King County Metro in Seattle for the possible sale of 200 buses, and announced inking a contract with the Washington State Department of Transportation that could reach up to 800 buses at $480 million.
The Greenville facility with 165 employees will become the company’s East Coast production facility with capacity to build 300 units per year. The West Coast facility will bring Proterra’s annual capacity to 424 units in three years. The company doesn’t expect to relocate Greenville employees, he said, “but we do have California employees working on projects in Greenville and vice versa.”
According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, Proterra represents 75 percent of venture capital activity in the state of South Carolina during the second quarter, raising $30 million in series 4 equity this June. Venture capital in South Carolina topped out at $40 million over two deals for the quarter, compared with $10.7 billion over 496 deals in California for the same period.
“The California location enables Proterra to more efficiently serve its West Coast customers and attract Silicon Valley talent in the Bay Area from the aerospace and manufacturing industries in Southern California,” said Horton.
