Oak Park Azure Dynamics plans to add 35 - 40 employees in next three years

As consumers make more environmentally friendly choices in their vehicles, Oak Park-based Azure Dynamics is helping companies like FedEx and DHL make environmentally friendly choices for their companies.

So, when you're in your hybrid humming along and you look over to see the FedEx guy also humming along in his hybrid, Azure Dynamics may be behind it.

Azure develops the technology for these environmentally friendly hybrid service vehicles and commercializes them for companies, cities, and states.

Right now the street isn't teeming with these vehicles but could be fairly soon.

"We're looking to produce 200 units this year," Bruce MacDonald, president of MacDonald Communication, speaking on the behalf of Azure. "But if this takes off the way we see it then we may crank that number up faster."

Of course, MacDonald says, it depends upon their clients. Azure's technology is currently in 50 units in the New York City Post office, in 20 FedEx vehicles in California, in 40 Florida Power and Light vehicles buzzing around, and more is expected to find their way into vehicles in Illinois and Ohio later this year.

And, just recently, AT&T put in an order to Azure for 15 gasoline parallel hybrid eclectic Ford E-450 vehicles.

They're all over the nation, just not all over the streets.

Azure was based in Toronto but wanted to extend its reach deeper into the automotive industry, so they up and moved down to Oak Park, employing about a dozen there. MacDonald says, that could change in the future.

"We want three concentrations of people," he says. "We have 50 in Boston, 50 in Vancouver and in the next couple years we'd like 50 in Oak Park."

Source: Bruce MacDonald, president of MacDonald Communications
Writer: Terry Parris, Jr.