Electric vehicles coming here soon

Area well-positioned to produce electric cars, components

By Jim Redden

Pamplin Media Group, Nov 12, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

COURTESY OF PORTLAND GENERAL ELECTRIC

Gov. Ted Kulongoski test-drives a Mitsubishi electric car, which could hit the streets of Portland soon.

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Portland is poised to become a center for the production and use of electric vehicles.

“Everything is already in place or falling into place for that to happen,” says Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogen, who leads a governor’s task force aimed at paving the way for electric vehicles.

The Portland area is well-positioned to gain jobs in the electric car industry partly because of our concentration of electronic and software companies, says Stephen Saltzman, director of Intel’s investment arm, Intel Capital. That’s because electric cars are much more dependent on computers than traditional gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles.

“Basically, electric cars replace mechanical engineering with software,” says Saltzman, who serves on the governor’s task force as an individual, not for Intel.

A major confidence booster for Portland comes from ReVolt, a Swiss company that makes batteries for electric vehicles. It recently chose Portland for its U.S. headquarters and manufacturing center and is now searching for a local site.

Although hybrids like the Toyota Prius have been available for years, few all-electric vehicles are currently sold in this country — and most of them fall far below comparable performance and safety standards. A small selection of Chinese vehicles can only be driven on neighborhood streets because they aren’t certified by the National Transportation Safety Board. A few electric motorcycles and three-wheeled vehicles are available, but they carry only one or two people.

New models coming

Cogen predicts all that is about to change in Portland. There’s talk of Mitsubishi introducing its electric vehicle, the i MiEV, here soon. The vehicle is already in mass production and on the roadways in Japan. Fisker Karma, a limited-edition luxury hybrid, will be sold by Ron Tonkin, starting next year. It uses a small gasoline engine to recharge batteries used by the electric motor powering the car.

The largest local rollout happens next fall, when Nissan plans to bring 4,700 of its LEAF electric cars to Oregon and four other states. LEAF, which stands for Leading, Environmentally Friendly, Affordable, Family Car, is a midsize, five-passenger hatchback designed to travel 100 miles before its batteries need recharging.

Up to 1,000 LEAFs are scheduled to go on sale for about $25,000 in Oregon next fall or winter, with distribution in the Portland, Salem, Eugene and Corvallis areas. They also will be distributed in Arizona, California, Tennessee and Washington.

Charging stations pivotal

These states were chosen partly because they have governments working with businesses to build electric-vehicle infrastructure, such as charging stations. In the Portland area, the state, various cities, Portland General Electric and other businesses are collaborating.

“The world of electricity and the world of transportation are coming together,” says Charlie Allcock, PGE’s director of economic development, who also serves on the governor’s task force.

By next summer, the coalition expects to begin installing up to 2,240 stations for recharging electric car batteries. Some will be installed at large employers, some in public facilities, and some in homes where early buyers of the cars — called early adopters — live, Allcock says.

Most of the stations require six to eight hours to fully recharge batteries. Fifty of them will be “quick-charge” or Level Three stations capable of charging batteries up to 80 percent of capacity within 30 minutes.

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