News

Drive Oregon Awards $146,584 in Matching Grants

June 11th, 2012

A press release has been issued announcing that Drive Oregon has made almost $150,000 in its first awards under its Matching Grant Program.  The awards were distributed to the following projects:

• $50,000 to support the Polaris Advanced Battery Research and Development Center, which will work to help companies developing new lithium ion battery products.
• $44,100 to support an electric bike demonstration program with member company Conscious Commuter and the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium(OTREC)  at PSU.
• $22,484 to support Portland State affiliate Jenny Liu’s project aiming to quantify and model the regional economic impacts of adopting electric vehicles.
• $16,000 to KersTech to model, design, and develop its compound hydraulic-electric hybrid motor technology for use on transit buses.
• 15,000 to the Oregon Institute of Technology to support the work of Jim Long and his colleagues model, simulate, and develop motor control algorithms.

Drive Oregon funding awards require a matching fund at least five times greater than its investment.  If all of the above projects receive those matching funds, the grants will leverage an expected $1.3 million in addition investment.  ”This award will play a key role in the success of our project, which we expect to leverage more than $800,000 in outside funding, create four high-wage jobs within a year, and ramp up to over 15 jobs in the next two to three years,” noted Doug Morris, developer of the Polaris Center.

Drive Oregon is accepting applications for a second round of matching grant opportunities with a deadline of August 1, 2012 and with an expected decision in early September.