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Winnebago Strengthens Its Position in the Production of Electric Vehicles

Winnebago Industries

Forest City-based Winnebago Industries is enhancing its production of electric commercial vehicles. It involves a partnership with a California manufacturer.

Winnebago has had a specialty vehicles division for 30 years. Now because of an arrangement with San Francisco Bay area-based Motiv Power Systems, it will be able to use chassis built specially for electric commercial vehicles. The vice president of strategic planning and development for Winnebago, Ashis Bhattacharya, says the mobile units will have a range of between 85-and-125 miles per single charge.

“We are looking at applications which are typically short-to-medium range urban kinds of applications, where the vehicle can come back to home base every day to recharge and go back,” he says.

Bhattacharya says they can be used for a variety of purposes, including mobile libraries and diagnostic clinics.

“It’s a whole trend of taking services to customers who are not getting the services conveniently, or who have to travel long distances to get access to those services,” he says.

The electric vehicles will be assembled at the Winnebago plant in Forest City.