A new auto-related manufacturing plant ... in Massachusetts?

This largely unthinkable notion is to be announced today by Boston-Power, which is best known for providing batteries for HP laptops. Dependent upon funding availability, the manufacturing facility in Auburn would employ 600.

From this morning's (still publishing) Boston Globe:

Boston-Power Inc., which manufactures the Sonata battery used in Hewlett-Packard laptops, today is expected to detail plans for a plant in Auburn that could employ about 600 people to produce batteries for plug-in hybrid and electric cars.

"I'm going to help [the electric-vehicle] market take off and I'd love to do that in the United States and, specifically, in Massachusetts," said chief executive Christina Lampe-Onnerud, who founded the company in 2005. It currently has about 100 employees in the state and several hundred more overseas.

Generally speaking, I'd raise a skeptical eye to such flowery talk, but having met Lampe-Onnerud at Network World's DEMO 2007conference it strikes me as genuine.

Since then Boston-Power has had little trouble attracting big-time financial backing and, despite the recession, has been hiring.

More power to them.

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