City council approved a plan this morning that aims to replace 20 percent of city-owned vehicles with electric cars by 2030 and also suggests the city buy at least 10 Nissan Leafs (Leaves?) within the year. If the city sticks to the strategy (pdf), Portland city government will buy at least 560 electric vehicles in the next two decades.
So who are we going to buying all these cars from? There’s been a lot of talk about the Chevy Volt, the GM electric car that manufacturers are hoping will resuscitate GM and earn our bailout back. But Portland’s Electric Vehicles Czar (yes, this job exists) James Mast says that the city will be going with Nissan for now because, although their Leaf is due out on the market in December (a month later than the Volt), they will be more widely available. Not good news for the Volt, or American-made cars.
Electric cars are still not available to the mass market, but city hall is hedging its bets that investing in the experimental technology will pay off both for the local economy and environment. Last year, Portland scored a $40 million federal grant to research electric vehicles, so we now have two dozen charging stations for electric vehicles in the region. Last year, Nissan declared Portland will be one of its five electric vehicle test cities nationwide and they’re planning to install another 2,000 charging stations locally. Sales of the $32, 000 Leaf with certainly be helped by federal subsidies that knock $7,000 off the price of each car.