Portland gets Daimler’s $40M electric truck engineering expansion
Daimler said it will do a $40 million, 110,000-square-foot expansion to its engineering facilities on Swan Island.
PORTLAND, Ore. — This story is courtesy of the Portland Business Journal, A KGW news partner. Read the full story here.
Nine months after the City Council endorsed inducements for the company, Daimler Truck North America on Friday announced it will grow its electric vehicle operations in Portland.
Daimler said it will do a $40 million, 110,000-square-foot expansion to its engineering facilities on Swan Island and develop an “electric vehicle supply equipment” training center at a cost of $3 million.
Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development agency, will provide a forgivable loan for half the cost of the training center and the state will back the engineering expansion with a $700,000 forgivable loan, the company said.
Last summer, the Portland council approved enterprise zone tax breaks for new investments by German-based Daimler’s North America unit, which is headquartered on Swan Island, in the hope of snaring 150 new high-wage jobs.
Daimler employs about 3,000 people in the area, where its Western Star diesel trucks are also manufactured.
A Daimler official told the council last year that it was also considering South Carolina, where it has its largest U.S. manufacturing operations, and Detroit, as expansion sites, adding, “We simply don’t do things without incentives anymore.”
Portland is where the company has rolled out its first electric trucks, including Freightliner eCascadia big rigs and the medium-duty Freighliner eM2.
