In Fairview, a team of 250 people is creating new electric forklifts for NACCO Materials Handling Group, a unit of NACCO Industries Inc. that makes Hyster and Yale forklifts.

“This is a world-class development center in our industry,” says Rajiv Prasad, NACCO Materials Handling Group’s vice president of global product development.

Electric forklifts have been around since the 1960s, says Matthew Swenson, the company’s engineer for electric rider products. But battery-powered forklifts initially were limited to lighter-duty work.

NACCO’s Fairview team has created newer electric models that can handle heavy loads as well.

“Our new line of trucks is designed to do anything you can do with the equivalent internal combustion engine vehicle,” Swenson says.

“Prior technology had good performance, but there was still a gap in power and productivity,” he says. “We’re closing that performance gap and have designed electric riders to do anything you can do with a diesel engine.”

Since 2009, the Fairview group has been busy rolling out a new generation of Hyster Electric Counterbalanced Lift Trucks and Yale Electric Rider Lift Trucks. New Hyster pneumatic-tire and cushion-tire models, which can lift up to 5 and 5.5 tons respectively, will hit the market this year.

“We are quite confident electric will last,” Swenson says, because they have numerous advantages.