Webster City got some good news on the green jobs front Monday:

EnVision Motor Company announced today that it will ship electric vehicles assembled at a facility in New York to a plant in Webster City. Workers in Webster City will finish the vehicles by installing the electric drive train.  EnVision president and C.E.O. Thomas Gleisner says these electric vehicles can reach a top speed of about 85 miles an hour. […]

These Electric Mobile Cars – EMC’s – can go about 200 miles on a charge, depending on how fast you drive, how much weight the vehicle is carrying and how much the vehicle has to battle wind friction. […]

Gleisner’s company, EnVision, is the U.S. distributor of these European-designed vehicles. The completed vehicle will roll off the assembly line at Auto Manufacturing Systems in Webster City, an already-existing plant.

As production ramps up, this deal is expected to create at least 300 jobs in Webster City. The Des Moines Register reported that the assembly line will use “factory space now occupied by Eagle Manufacturing, an Electrolux subcontractor. […] Eagle, a manufacturing company that now performs a variety of contract duties for Electrolux, is scheduled to lose that work by the end of next year.” In October 2009, Electrolux announced plans to close plants in Webster City and Jefferson, eliminating about 850 jobs by early 2011.

From a statement released by the governor’s office:

“We at EnVision were born and raised in Iowa. We could have easily gone outside Iowa and the United States, but we wanted to add jobs to Iowa, our home,” said EnVision CEO Thomas Gleisner. “We could not look past the ability of a community like Webster City to meet our needs. They have the experience and the workforce, and they have been involved in quality manufacturing for decades.”

EnVision is a distributor of electric vehicles for the entire United States. Auto Manufacturing Systems of Webster City will run the plant. Its parent company is Electric Mobile Cars, an importer based in New York.

City and business leaders in Webster City have also been recruiting employers in the renewable energy field to try to replace some of the Electrolux jobs. The city of Newton attracted some wind manufacturing following Maytag’s demise a few years ago.