ATHENS: 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 country.
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.
It was designed and built from scratch by students at the university, whose expertise was reportedly a factor in the US electric carmaker’s decision, announced in February, 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 country 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 United States, including at Tesla’s headquarters, said electrical engineering professor Antonios Kladas.
The new Tesla facility, run out of the state-run Demokritos scientific research centre near Athens, could also draw Greek scientists living abroad to return, said Kladas, who heads the Prometheus Team.
After suffering a crippling loss of 25 percent of gross national product (GDP), Greece is taking baby steps to emerge from a recession that pushed around half a million people to flee in search of work.
Economics professor at the University of Athens Panayiotis Petrakis predicted two percent average growth for Greece for the coming three years — just short of the eurozone’s 2.3 percent rate in 2017.
