King County transportation may plug in very soon

Metropolitan King County Councilman Larry Phillips said today a form of transportation that involves “plugging in” rather than “filling up” is just around the corner with the County’s effort to become a hub of green vehicle technology.

Metropolitan King County Councilman Larry Phillips said today a form of transportation that involves “plugging in” rather than “filling up” is just around the corner with the County’s effort to become a hub of green vehicle technology.

“Electric vehicles are in our future, and King County has an opportunity to make them our present by leveraging federal stimulus grant dollars and private funding to build the needed charging infrastructure,” said Phillips, who drove a demonstration plug-in electric hybrid vehicle for eight months and co-sponsored green vehicle legislation. “In talking to the people of our region, they are eager to embrace options for reducing our consumption of fossil fuels, and having driven an electric car myself, I know that these vehicles are a viable alternative.”

Representatives from the King County Department of Transportation today informed the Council’s Physical Environment Committee of their intent to submit three grant applications to the U.S. Department of Energy seeking a total of $425 million for transportation electrification projects around the United States. The Puget Sound area is the only region included in all three applications, and King County is a partner in all of the grants.

The partnerships in the works are with the federal government, other municipalities and private companies – such as Ford Motor Company and Nissan – to bring some of the nation’s cleanest fuels and hybrid-electric technology available to our area.

These partnerships emerged from Puget Sound New Energy Solutions, a consortium of municipalities and utilities in the four-county region, developing a common regional vision for clean-energy investments. They come just seven months after the county launched a groundbreaking initiative to develop and test new clean-vehicle technologies and to spur nationwide consumer demand for electric and battery powered vehicles.

With automotive manufacturers set to launch the nation’s first mass-produced, reasonably priced, plug-in electric vehicles beginning in 2010, King County has been looking to new electric-vehicle technology as the key to energy efficient transportation and job creation for the coming decade.

King County hopes to be selected for partnerships that would bring:

• Several hundred additional plug-in vehicle charging stations all across King County – many at Metro Transit facilities. The charging stations would be installed at transit facilities and sites provided by the public and private partners, including the Eastside cities;

• Two innovative “battery exchange” stations in King County. These stations would function much like a car wash – drive through and your old battery is swapped-out with a fresh one;

• 15 new Ford Azure plug-in hybrid electric mini-buses to serve Metro paratransit customers who require specialized public transportation services; and

• The acquisition of 75 Nissan all-electric vehicles for use in the county’s Vanshare and motor pool programs.