ADVANCED VEHICLE RESEARCH CENTER breaks ground for new facility in Danville, Virginia

PRLog (Press Release) - Dec. 2, 2008 - Danville, VA – AVRC Virginia broke ground for a new Advanced Vehicle Research Center facility in the Cyber Park near the Danville Regional Airport on November 24th, 2008.  AVRC becomes the second tenant of the Cyber Park, joining Canadian Bank Notes who located in the park earlier this year.

The AVRC facility will be a 16,000 square foot headquarters to include a research and design center in the Cyber Park on a 13.8 acre site on Stinson Drive. Additionally, the company will construct a closed loop natural terrain track on a 63-acre site near the Danville Regional Airport. The track will be used to test manned and unmanned military vehicles and off-road vehicles. Construction is expected to be complete in the spring of 2009.

AVRC has a commercial initiative to convert hybrid Toyota Priuses to Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles. (PHEV’s) and other initiatives include natural gas conversion and Hydrogen mobile generation. They have done more PHEV conversions than any other company on the East Coast for clients including Progress Energy, Duke Energy, City of Raleigh, and other clients from Virginia to Florida.

“We see the Danville area as the perfect place for our expansion and we’re very enthusiastic about beginning construction,” said Dick Dell, Executive Director of the AVRC. “The region already has significant assets that support the automotive industry such as the Virginia International Raceway. Our work in advanced technologies and alternative fuel vehicles will benefit from the extensive research being done at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, including Jouster, Viper, and Virginia Tech.”

“AVRC is at the forefront of alternative fuel research and hybrid vehicle technologies. Our goal is to make the Piedmont Virginia area a recognized center for automotive research.”  

“We’re here thanks to the encouragement and support of the City of Danville, Pittsylvania County and the Dan River Business Development Center. They understand the value of cooperative efforts to create jobs in a difficult time. AVRC will invest over $3 million dollars and create at least 35 high tech jobs here in Danville over the next 3 to 5 years. We fully expect a large number of jobs to be created from supporting industry growth as well. ”

New employment opportunities will be posted on the company web site, www.avrc.com .  Resumes can be sent to jobs@avrc.com

The company has been prominently featured in print articles nationally and internationally for their work with hybrid vehicle technologies.  

An overview document of the AVRC facility in Danville, Virginia can be found at the following link

http://www.avrc.com/presentations/AVRC_Virginia.doc

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Focused on automotive, aerospace, energy research and development, the AVRC promotes alternative fuel research and technology commercialization, working with the leading universities of the Southeast region to provide education and outreach activities.