Oregon bets big on electric cars

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Dave Mayfield, ECOTality

David Mayfield's largely nondescript office in downtown’s Skidmore district isn't festooned with construction workers.

There are no blueprints laying about.

There isn't a hardhat in site.

Yet it's here, steps away from a light-rail stop, that Oregon’s transportation future is being mapped, part of one of the state’s most important infrastructure projects of the young century.

Mayfield is leading Oregon’s portion of a $250 million, six-state roll-out of electric vehicles and 15,000 charging stations, part of a federal Department of Energy-funded project administered by his employer, San Francisco-based ECOTality Inc.

Over the next six months, ECOTality will begin installing the first of more than 1,000 charging stations across Portland, Salem and Eugene in partnership with Nissan North America Inc. Starting in December, Nissan will begin delivering its all-electric Leaf vehicles in the region early next year.

The ECOTality project, paired with news that several major automakers — Ford, Mitsubishi, Smart and Navistar among others — have selected Portland as a test market for their forthcoming electric vehicles, has economic development officials salivating over Oregon’s position as a leader in the still-embryonic world of EVs.

"Portland in particular is known to be an early-adopter and innovator," Mayfield said.

Yet the economic benefits of being first in line aren't so easy to grasp.

Just like installing a charging station isn’t a traditional infrastructure project, like building a bridge, the economic benefits of electric vehicles don’t adhere to the typical job-creating archetype.

"This is not what's happening in Detroit or in Tennessee or in Alabama or South Carolina where you've got this huge mega-plant churning out thousands of cars," said Charlie Allcock, economic development director for Portland General Electric Co. "The job creation for us will be much more niche -focused."

At the most basic level, ECOTality’s "EV Project," funded with nearly $1 million in federal stimulus funds, will bring work to a network of regional contractors whose job it will be to install the charging systems — 1,000 of which will be based at businesses, 150 at public buildings, 90 at the homes of Nissan Leaf owners, and another 45 quick-charge units.

Mayfield said the company had reached agreements with five contractors, including electrical firms and signage experts.

The making of the charging stations themselves won’t have much economic impact in Oregon.

ECOTality selected Michigan-based Roush Manufacturing as the vendor for its so-called "Blink" network, bypassing some local charging station manufacturers such as Shorepower Technologies in Portland and Beaverton start-up OpConnect LLC.

But that doesn’t mean those companies won't benefit from the installation of the network in their backyard.

The EV Project at the forefront is a data-gathering exercise intended to document the performance of electric vehicle charging stations and monitor driver habits.

Though it would have preferred to be the selected manufacturer on the project, OpConnect can use the resulting data to better evaluate the local market, said Nathan Isaacs, the company’s business development manager.

The EV Project is a pilot project, so the charging stations deployed through the program aren’t expected to satisfy demand.

OpConnect can mine the project's data for clues about potentially underserved areas, while using the lessons learned from the project to market their product to other geographies.

"Once that data is collected and analyzed, we'll be able to see where the real needs are and fill in the holes," Isaacs said. "We see an opportunity to take advantage of those lessons and talk to communities that are outside the Oregon part of (the project)."

But even if the EV Project is just the start of a more comprehensive regional charging network, it's still a benefit to the handful of startup electric vehicle manufacturers and suppliers in Oregon that have cropped up in the past few years.

Electric vehicles hold a unique place in the world of consumer technology.

While there can be huge demand for the product, that demand can't be acted upon without the infrastructure to support it. In other words, a vehicle that can get from Point A to Point B isn't much use if it can't recharge to return to Point A.

Oregon's startup car makers believe that having an advanced charging network in their own state will allow them to progress far more quickly.

ECOTality’s Blink network will be designed so the charging stations can communicate with the onboard computers on some vehicles, like the Leaf, which will then help navigate the driver to the nearest charging location, Mayfield said.

That ability will help relieve so-called "range anxiety" — the EV equivalent to the fear of running out of gas — making an electric vehicle purchase a more practical buy for regional consumers.

"We don’t have the issues with range anxiety," said Trevor Steele, director of government relations at Eugene-based Arcimoto LLC, which hopes to deliver its first all-electric, three-wheeled Pulse sometime next year. "You know drivers are going to be able to charge their vehicles."

That, in turn, makes Oregon something of an incubator for EV startups, said Tim Miller, CEO of Green Lite Motors, a Portland-based startup developing a three-wheeled gas-electric hybrid vehicle.

"If Green Lite or Arcimoto can sell their first 500 or 1,000 units in this region, that's a whole lot easier market than in New York or Florida," said Miller, who's trying to raise around $500,000 to get his vehicle into production.

Just as important, Arcimoto's Steele said electric vehicle charging stations — and all of the signage and reserved parking spaces that will come with it — will become a commonality in the region.

"To have that public awareness means it’s a lot easier for the industry in Oregon to sell products in Oregon and not have to look elsewhere to sell immediately," he said.

PGE’s Allcock said the state's adoption of electric vehicles is also creating opportunities for manufacturers from other industries.

Companies that might have made electric motors or controllers or other components for the state’s recreational vehicle manufacturing sector, for example, might find new opportunities with EV manufacturers. Arcimoto's Steele is part of an industry-wide EV lobbying group called Drive Oregon that includes many of these suppliers, like Portland-based AmFor Electronics, which makes and designs wiring systems.

"It's not all that hard for them to say, 'I can also be a supplier to EVs,'" Allcock said.

Bit by bit, small corners of the regional manufacturing economy could achieve growth from electric vehicles. It’s what Allcock calls, "real niche plays, where you get base hits."

"Wouldn’t it be great if the plant that made RVs in Coburg now made electric cars?" he asked. "Home runs are nice, but they don’t come very often."

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