[Updated and corrected, 5/4/10, 1:15 pm ET] Jason Forcier was raised in Flint, MI, a city whose economic woes have been tied to the decline of the U.S. auto industry. Now he’s grown up and heading efforts at a growing company called A123 Systems to make advanced batteries for a new generation of energy-efficient cars and trucks. The vehicles hold promise for revving up the future of the auto sector in his home state and around the country.
That might sound like the first page of a Hollywood movie script, but Forcier and A123 Systems’ ambitious plans in the auto industry are real. Last summer, Watertown, MA-based A123 (NASDAQ:[[ticker:AONE]]) hired Forcier to be its man in Michigan, where the company plans to expand production of lithium-ion batteries for automobiles at plants in Livonia and Romulus. Batteries like the ones A123 produces power electric and hybrid-electric vehicles, and the company aims to grow its sales to automakers as the popularity of such autos grows.
Despite deals it has already secured with Chrysler, BMW, and other major industry players, A123 still has much work to do to succeed in the competitive auto battery sector. Forcier says that the company’s engineering group is working on boosting the energy capacity of its batteries to make them more attractive to automakers from both cost and performance standpoints. The company, which does most of its existing manufacturing in China and Korea, is also counting on its increasing production capacity in Michigan to ensure steady battery supplies to its auto customers.
Like many others from Flint, Forcier, 38, has deep roots in the auto industry. His father, his grandfather, and most of his uncles were all employees of General Motors, he says. While studying engineering at Kettering University in Flint, he was in a co-op program that put him to work as an intern in multiple departments at GM. So he’s been closer than most Americans to the endangered U.S. auto industry and its devastating impact on the economy in Michigan. [Editor’s note: A previous version of this story mistakenly said that Forcier once worked for GM as an industrial engineer. His father was actually an industrial engineer at GM. We regret the error.]
“The economy here in Michigan has been in a bad state of affairs due to the decline in the auto industry,” Forcier, vice president of A123’s automotive group, says. “But there’s a lot of integrity around here and support for what we’re doing.”
At A123, Forcier is in a unique position to help lead the expansion of a growing company in a growing industry in his state. The company, a 9-year-old spinout of MIT, was employing between 150 and 200 people in Michigan as of March. While such a work force figure is modest, the company planned to begin recruiting people last month for jobs at its manufacturing operation in Livonia, which is slated to begin production in June. (He says the A123 website gets thousands of resumes per month for jobs in the Wolverine State and Massachusetts.) Forcier didn’t provide exact figures on how many jobs the company is adding in Michigan, but he placed the number in the hundreds for this year.
Michigan has a lot riding on the success of A123. Last spring the state awarded the company $100 million in refundable tax credits to support its expansion in the state. Later in 2009, the company won a $249.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, which provides a 50-cent match on every dollar the firm invests in expanding its manufacturing operations in Michigan, Forcier says. Still, it could take a while before next-generation battery companies like A123 provide the kind of economic boost the state needs to
