Welcome, Proterra. Welcome to the future. (By Kate)

One of the First Electric Buses in the Country

On Tuesday, Furman University hosted many of Greenville’s leaders and visionaries to listen to a presentation on the vision for Proterra’s highly anticipated arrival. Greenville Forward was part of this group and we were excited to learn more about what is in store for the automotive research industry. In case you are unfamiliar with Proterra, you can see for yourself here, but I will give you the Reader’s Digest version that I hope will offer a good summary of why this is so exciting and what it means for Greenville County to welcome this company to our community.

Proterra is a clean energy research and manufacturing company that has developed one of the first alternative fuel transit buses.  They have created a prototype bus that has been traveling across the country to share its technology and capabilities with other researchers/scientists who needed to “see it to believe it.”  While this in itself is fantastic information, Greenville is particularly excited about this company because they have decided to locate themselves in Greenville, South Carolina to build more of these buses and potentially create a simulated light rail transit system in our community.

Proterra will join the CU-ICAR campus and create job opportunities and further establish Greenville as an important automotive research hub.  On Tuesday, Greenville Forward got the chance to meet the people behind Proterra and to take a ride in the bus around Furman’s campus.

Amid all of this exciting information and sharing a room with some of the Greenville’s leaders, we were flattered and honored to receive acclamation from David Shi at the beginning of the presentation.  Dr. Shi began his welcome of Proterra with a reminder of how Vision 2025 laid the groundwork for bringing this kind of development to fruition. He read portions of the Vision document that planned for something akin to the Swamp Rabbit Trail before it came into existence, sections that hinted towards a hope for Greenville to become an automotive research hub, and a final section that planned for vast improvements in our mass transit structure in Greenville.  He showed the audience that two of these three goals were well on their way to attainment and recognized Greenville Forward and Russell Stall as being the keepers of this vision.

Dr. Shi even said, “Russell Stall is the hub of the wheel of the vision” and thanked him publicly for his dedication to Greenville and Vision 2025.  What great affirmation for Greenville Forward!

Proterra’s arrival in Greenville marks another step toward achieving Vision 2025 goals and reminds us again of why our work is so important. Maybe soon we will be able to say that the third vision goal that Dr. Shi mentioned has also been achieved.  Welcome, Proterra!