Portland this week quietly hosted two separate national electric car launches likely to change the face of auto travel in America.
On Tuesday, Ford Motor Company and PGE offered media test-drives of their new plug-in Ford Focus Electric, at the Portland State University Urban Center.
Nissan countered with the Leaf, feted at a ceremony Thursday featuring Gov. Ted Kulongoski.
Both companies, which have strategically angled for public/private partnership agreements in the state, say they're capitalizing on what they hope is an eager market in Oregon for a radical new technology – one which most notably will require a major shift in the energy grid.
That shift boils down to fuel, and how to get it. In fact the daunting task of building a new electric vehicle infrastructure has boggled the effective marketing of electric cars for years.
General Motors distributed hundreds of plug-in cars in the mid-1990s, distributing them to volunteer customer who almost universally adored them.
The EV1 cars were made to fit into a household socket, where they could take as long as 8 hours to recharge.
At the end of the 1990s GM shut down its venture abruptly, destroying every vehicle but one individual car that had been kept in underground storage. The EV1's end touched off charges of a conspiracy in favor of the fossil fuels industry, and inspired a passionate 2006 documentary in favor of the ill-starred vehicle, called "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
Since then the crash of the economy and its devastating impact on fuel-guzzling car makers has boosted the quest for plug-in vehicles and hybrids.
GM ended production of the Humvee in February this year, and is now producing the Volt hybrid. Toyota also is focusing on hybrid vehicles – rather than all-electric cars like the Ford Focus – allowing drivers to refuel with gas and travel hundreds miles without needing a recharge.
Today, before anyone can drive either a Leaf or a Focus more than 50 miles from home, a system of electrical charging stations will have to sprout regionally. Nissan's event was the eagerly-awaited unveiling of the first quick-charging station in the country, in PGE's underground parking garage on Southwest Naito Parkway.
Ford is partnering with PGE to build a network of thousands of public charging stations throughout the Interstate 5 corridor, as well as some in private homes.
That leads to another debate – how much electricity does it take to recharge a vehicle? And where will the average motorist go to get juiced up?
What makes Oregon – and Washington state, where the Focus was unveiled Thursday on the second stop of a 14-city tour – such sought-after early adopters of the electric technology is, in part, hundreds of millions of dollars in American Recovery and Investment Act grants awarded for production and development of recharger technology, including battery cells, packs, and experimental public stations.
Conservative analysts around the nation argue that electric cars are not truly "zero emission" because so much electricity is generated by coal.
Plug-in car advocates counter that since the vehicles do not use combustion engines, they pollute less and require less maintenance; that electric car engines literally stop when the car is at a standstill, meaning a significant reduction in fuel use overall; and that future trends in electricity are likely to move more toward wind and solar.
So electric car owners can expect to plug in their cars at home and recharge using a 220-volt special recharge station they can have installed at home, which will take 6-8 hours; a wall socket at home, which will take 15-20 hours; or drive to a "quick-fill" where the energy re-load will take 15-30 minutes.
While there was some confusion and disagreement at how much energy an electric car uses at the Ford Focus event at PSU Tuesday afternoon – and how much money that would add to an owner's home electric bill – elsewhere there is no debate about that: experts agree electric cars cost very little to maintain and fuel.
The best example is the receipt for broadband tycoon Simon Hackett's 3,000 km race across Australia in last year's Green Global Challenge. Driving his all-electric Tesla Roadster more than 1,800 miles, Hackett says he spent only $126.11.
PGE estimates electric cars set to appear in Portland will cost about three cents a mile to fuel, compared to 15 cents a mile for gas-powered vehicles.
For now, the state of Oregon and the federal government are throwing tax incentives at consumers ready to take the plunge in plug-in vehicles.
The reservation list for the $32,000 Leaf, which opened in April, offers Oregon buyers a $7,500 federal tax credit, plus a $1,500 state tax credit; add to that cost $2,200 for a home recharger, which itself includes a 50 percent federal tax credit. Its expected rollout date is sometime in December of this year.
The Ford Focus Electric – there's also a plug-in Ford Escape Hybrid and a Ford Fusion Hybrid –has as yet no sticker price, but qualifies for the same tax credits. It is expected to hit the streets in 2011.

View the federal tax incentives for electric and fusion cars here