Etergo, an Amsterdam-based manufacturer of electric scooters, is set to open a new factory in the province of Drenthe in mid-2020.
Translation by Hans de Preter
RTV Drenthe reports that the new facility, which will be located inside the existing Technologies Added factory in Emmen, will produce up to 60,000 new scooters a year and should create hundreds of job opportunities. The electric scooter but also provided with the most ingenious apps and technology.
The company, which was developed by Elon Musk fans Marijn Flipse and Bart Jacobsz Rosier, announced their plans to expand to Drenthe on Thursday during a presentation at the Emmen factory. The two Amsterdam-based entrepreneurs designed an electric AppScooter, a scooter that uses WiFi and 4G connections with better integration for navigation and music.
The Etergo scooters are not cheap: they cost around 3,400 euros a piece at the moment, but the owners expect the price to decline as the company grows. Flipse and Rosier ultimately want to produce around 60,000 of the two-wheelers per year, and they have already raised twenty million euros through crowdfunding.
The entrepreneurs told RTV Drenthe that they choose to set up shop in Emmen for a number of reasons, namely in order to keep an eye on the production process together with their technicians – the Drenthe factory is easily accessible for the Amsterdam company – and, consequently, hopefully avoid production problems that plagued Tesla manufacturers.
