Prior to joining Remy, Mr Quinn was owner and managing director of Power Technology Ventures, a business development firm specializing in emerging power technologies.

John Weber, CEO of Remy International, said: “We are projecting rapid growth over the next five years in the electric vehicle/hybrid electric vehicle market, and Remy has some terrific technology for these applications. We expect to build a $500m global business unit for Remy International, and we’re investing the resources to make this happen.

”We’re staffing up our engineering, sales and market development functions immediately, and we’ll be expanding our manufacturing capacity by the end of this year.”

Last October, Remy International introduced an advanced electric motor for hybrid and hybrid-electric vehicles. The company said that this product, the HVH250, is based on Remy’s patented High Voltage Hairpin technology and offers the high power and torque density. It is the first in a series of new off-the-shelf products planned by Remy for the automotive, truck, bus and heavy equipment markets.

Remy International claimed that its HVH motor platform exceeds not only the current DOE targets for electric motor power density, but Remy’s platform already exceeds published 2020 DOE targets for power density by 200%.

The company said that with multiple manufacturing sites in North America and Europe, it has the capacity to produce more than 100,000 of these electric motors annually.

Remy’s expansion of this product line is being funded in part by recent Department of Energy grants aimed at accelerating the commercialization of electric vehicle technologies. Some of the grant funds will also be available to support customer costs associated with the integration of the motor/generator system.