A manufacturer of fully electric vehicles has increased production sooner than expected and will add 70 more jobs this year, welcome news in a region battered by layoffs at recreational vehicle plants.

Think North America, with 27 workers currently, will add the new jobs in hopes of producing 2,500 cars this year at its Elkhart operations in a former RV plant, WNDU-TV reported Thursday. The company began production in October.

“We have ramped-up operations faster than we expected to,” Brendan Prebo, a spokesman for the Norwegian-based company, told the South Bend television station.

THINK will add more production lines to its 205,000-square-foot Elkhart factory by the end of May, Prebo said. That means more money and more jobs for Elkhart County, where the unemployment rate was 13 percent last September.

“Yeah I had been laid off for about a year,” production worker Josh Medord said. “The ability to come in and start at the ground level of a company and hopefully grow with it from basically zero is amazing.”

The company markets its two-seat cars as an environmentally friendly alternative to gasoline vehicles. Using standard home electric outlets, an eight- to 10-hour charge will get drivers enough power for about 100 miles. The base market price is $34,000.

Manufacturing director Karl Turner has said that when the plant reaches full production by 2013, it will employ 400.  “This is just the start for us,” Turner said.

Indiana took delivery of 15 vehicles last month for use by the Department of Natural Resources. The delivery was part of the state’s “Project Plug-In” that’s intended to make Indiana a leader in making and using plug-in vehicles.