While many are suffering burnout from the overwhelming amount of EV discussion as of late, the conference hosted by Portland State University and Portland General Electric last month was different.
The conference brought together many of the area’s electric vehicle stakeholders to discuss and begin planning for EVs in the region. These stakeholders included OEMs such as Nissan, Toyota, and smart USA, as well as Portland General Electric, local business associations, the local university, many city and county leaders including the Mayor of Corvallis, OR, charging station providers, and fleet managers.
Editor’s Note: This is a guest contribution by Elaina Medina of Portland General Electric.
This week Portland General Electric welcomed news it was named a strategic participant and Oregon was named one of five test markets for the largest rollout of EVs and an associated charging station network in U.S. history.
Editor’s Note: This is a guest contribution by Elaina Medina of Portland General Electric.
We are anticipating a large turnout at this year’s “EV Awareness Day” on Saturday, July 11, at Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Ore. Portland General Electric is proud to sponsor this annual event hosted by the Oregon Electric Vehicle Association.
The PGE team will be on hand to show off its new PGE plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and talk to attendees about our network of more than a dozen charging stations we are installing across the Portland-metro area and Salem.
With one of Nissan’s senior EV project engineers sitting next to me, it felt like I was being expectantly doted on by a protective parent as I drove Nissan’s EV-02 electric test car around a closed course Monday. Given that the EV-02 is only one of two such cars in the world, the reaction was perhaps understandably warranted.
Earlier in the day Nissan had held a joint press conference with Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, Portland Mayor Sam Adams, and representatives from Portland General Electric, to further affirm Oregon’s burgeoning relationship with Nissan to be one of the first and premier locations for the company’s late 2010 electric car launch.
“Electric vehicles have the possibility to transform our economy, revive our car industry, and improve our environment. To make sure electric vehicles succeed this time around we need to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in battery technology and [charging] infrastructure.”
The power plant in Boardman, Oregon, is the state’s only coal-fired facility — and also the the state’s largest single emitter of carbon dioxide. To deal with this problem, Portland General Electric and Columbia Energy Partners have started a pilot project to turn the otherwise nasty emissions into biodiesel, ethanol, and even livestock feed.
