By Clint Williams
OpportunityGreaterPhoenix.com

Metro Phoenix is plugged into a $100 million project designed to make driving an electric car practical at last.

Widespread adoption of plug-in electric cars – ones that runs solely on battery power – has been hamstrung by a classic chicken-or-the-egg conundrum: no wants to drive an electric car until charging stations are widespread and no one wants to build a network of convenient charging stations until there are enough electric cars on the road to make it pay off.

The EV Project – spearheaded by Scottsdale-based ECOtality Inc. – will deliver the chicken and the eggs to key markets in five states by the end of the year. Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation (eTec), a subsidiary of ECOtality, was awarded a $99.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for the three-year project that includes installation of 11,210 charging systems in Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego, Portland, Eugene, Corvallis, Seattle, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga.

“By this time next year, you’ll see more than 2,000 charging stations popping up in the Valley,” says Colin Read, vice president of corporate development for ECOtality.

About half the charging stations will be installed – for free – in the homes of owners of the new Nissan LEAF, a battery-powered hatchback due on the lots of Valley dealers in December. Another 1,000 or so charging stations will be built in the parking lots of grocery stores, coffee shops and other public spots, Read says.

About 50 of the charging stations will be so-called fast-charge stations that will give the LEAF enough juice in 15 minutes to travel 80 miles.

Summer temperatures are one reason Metro Phoenix is among the test markets, says Read.

“There are very few places in the country where it gets up to 120 degrees,” Read says. “This is a good place to test the boundaries of the technology.”

The Valley was also picked as one of the markets of the project because of the demographics and culture.

“If you look around the streets of Phoenix, you see a lot of hybrids around,” Read says.

The Nissan LEAF, which was on display at several sites around the Valley over the long New Year’s weekend, seats five and has a range of about 100 miles. The average driver travels about 40 miles a day, says Paul Hawson of the Nissan LEAF product planning team.

“The LEAF is a real-world vehicle,” Hawson says. “You can get a ticket in it; the top speed is 90 mph.”

The EV Project will deliver a little jolt to the Phoenix-area job market, too.

“We’ll be hiring 50 to 100 people by the end of 2010,” Read says, adding that the project is expected to create 250 jobs in Arizona by 2012.