When a group of Greek students dreamt up the Pyrforos electric vehicle, they never imagined their futuristic, energy-efficient invention would inspire US automaker Tesla to invest in their crisis-hit nation.
The tiny, pod-like car created by engineering students at the National Technical University of Athens has won cult status in Greece and won a string of awards at the Shell Eco-Marathon championship.
The vehicle is bright red and looks like a cross between a race car and a children’s toy.
Photo: AFP
It was designed and built from scratch by students at the university, who were reportedly a factor in the US electric carmaker’s decision, announced last month, to set up a research and development facility in Greece.
It is a story Athens hopes to replicate after a turbulent decade of crippling financial woes that left the nation on the brink of crashing out of the eurozone.
Built by the university’s Prometheus Team, the Pyrforos has seen several Greek engineers land jobs in the US, including at Tesla’s headquarters, electrical engineering professor Antonios Kladas said.
The new Tesla facility, run out of the state-run Demokritos scientific research center near Athens, could also draw Greek scientists living abroad to return, said Kladas, who heads the Prometheus Team.
This would be “very good news for the Greek economy,” hit badly by a brain drain, he said.
After suffering a crippling loss of 25 percent of GDP, Greece is taking baby steps to emerge from a recession that pushed about half a million people to flee in search of work.
Of all the EU nations, youth unemployment is still highest in Greece, hovering just under 45 percent compared with an average of about 17 percent for the bloc.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras welcomed the move by Elon Musk’s Tesla to pour about 750,000 euros (US$929,123) into a nation that had totally lost the confidence of investors.
The economy last year grew 1.4 percent, only the second time in a decade of crisis the nation had managed any expansion.
“Support for research and innovation plays a key role in restructuring production,” Tsipras said last month.
Given the sheer magnitude of Greece’s woes, it will take a lot more to get the nation up to speed.
However, Demokritos director George Nounesis hopes Tesla’s arrival would at least help put Greece on the map of global innovation — a first step toward recovery.
For now, Tesla is expected to hire 40 engineers to work at the facility and Nounesis said most would be Greeks from the diaspora.
There are other signs of hope.
University of Athens economics professor Panayiotis Petrakis predicted 2 percent average growth for Greece for the coming three years — just short of the eurozone’s 2.3 percent rate last year.
Up to 4 billion euros of investment have been pumped into Greece in the past two years, a record in recent memory, according to the government.
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