Ambiente aims at international electric truck business

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Rendering of Ambiente Motors' truck design.

Barefoot Motors founder and former CEO Melissa Brandao has put down stakes in Ashland, Ore., where her second electric-vehicle venture, Ambiente Motors, is targeting a market thousands of miles away.

Drawn by Oregon’s talent pool, a budding community of electric car manufacturers and suppliers, and Oregon’s ubiquitous green ethic, Brandao plans to build an engineering facility for one-ton electric trucks.

Those trucks aren’t destined for Oregon roadways. Instead, the trucks are geared toward utility and commercial customers at 30 logistics companies in Brazil, 10 of those American companies including FedEx, DHL and UPS.

There’s no deal in the works yet. And Brandao faces a significant hurdle: Capital.

Her experiences to date, however, weigh in favor of bringing this latest idea to fruition. Brandao edged into the electric vehicle business at ZAP, an electric scooter and car distributor, and became the first female founder of an electric vehicle company when she launched Barefoot Motors, which builds electric utility vehicles, in California in 2007.

She sold her interest in the company a year later. A career manager and entrepreneur, she’s always been headed to the next idea. Brandao was once one of five employees for ISI Emerging Markets before helping that company establish roots around the world. Partly as a result, she speaks fluent Portuguese and holds her own in French, Spanish and Russian. Her experiences abroad and her research tell her that Brazil is the next frontier for electric cars.

"In emerging markets you have an incredible cluster of population density," said Brandao, referring to Russia, India, China and Brazil.

Heavy traffic is responsible for 73 percent of pollution emissions in Brazil, she said. With the number of cars in the world projected to double in 20 years, Brandao expects Brazil and other emerging markets to see the most growth in traffic. Brazil stands out as a hotspot of environmental friendliness. Drivers are already culling 50 percent of their fuel from ethanol, a scintillating prospect for an electric vehicle developer.

"You can't really just say let’s go do it, there’s no talent pool, so the best thing to do is to set up an engineering and innovation center in the U.S. that’s appropriate for the U.S. and can export know-how to a partner in Brazil," she said. "Essentially we're using American technology and what I would say is innovation in business and applying it in a market that really has the potential to generate significant revenue for a company like ours."

Ambiente Motors has a design for its one-ton truck, the talent to build prototypes in America and a company established to manufacture the trucks in Brazil. But Brandao is still on the hunt for approximately $500,000 to fund the prototypes. Once she has them, she believes the trucks can hit the road by 2012 and retail at the equivalent of $32,000 each. She said she is currently engaged in talks with potential buyers.

As the future takes shape for Ambiente Motors, one thing is clear: The company is part of a growing community of electric car businesses that are increasingly calling Oregon home. Two other electric car companies also have operations in Ashland: Brammo Motorsports and Brandao’s former enterprise Barefoot Motors. Arcimoto LLC is based in Eugene. Green Lite Motors, Lit Motors, Ryno Motors and Porteon Electric Vehicles Inc. are all located in Portland. And component manufacturers are dotting the state, providing charging stations, batteries and power systems.

For an entrepreneur, that’s attractive. Barefoot Motors initially targeted California vineyards, said Brandao, but the state lacked an adequate workforce to build the vehicles and offered an environment where frustration stood in place of the creative fusion now in play between electric car companies in Oregon. Manufacturers were using different platforms, failed to collaborate with one another, and California didn’t take notice of the fledgling industry, even as Oregon wooed Barefoot Motors north, Brandao said.

As she eyes Brazil with Ambiente Motors, she expects the collaborative atmosphere in Oregon to improve on her endeavors.

Lee van der Voo, lvdvoo*at*gmail.com, is a freelance writer for Sustainable Business Oregon.