Projects

Mission Motor Company Grant For Electric Vehicle Component Commercialization Through Product Validation and Process Improvements

San Francisco-based Mission Motor Company will use an Energy Commission grant to help it bring its prototype electric vehicle components to commercial production. The company’s goal is to create an assembly facility at its research and engineering headquarters in downtown San Francisco.

In 2007 the company developed Mission One, a high performance electric motorcycle with a top speed of 150 miles per hour and a range of 150 miles on a charge. Now the company is using that technology to create battery modules and motor control systems that will work in other electric motorcycles, scooters, cars, buses and even outdoor power equipment. The company’s electric powertrain is modular and scalable in order to work in a number of different electric vehicles. Production orders are already coming in from vehicle manufacturers.

Grant Amount

$505,381

Match Funding

$623,581 from Mission Motors.

Project Participants

Mission Motor Company, a high performance electric motorcycle and electric powertrain technology company based in San Francisco that employed 15 people in late 2010.

Project Benefits

Completion of this project will result in a new electric vehicle component manufacturing facility in San Francisco. It will quickly create four permanent manufacturing jobs. Mission Motor Company will design assembly lines that should be capable of producing 30,000 battery packs and motor control systems each year by 2015. That could create as many as 100 Bay-area green-collar manufacturing and assembly jobs.

If used in a motorcycle, each powertrain will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 72 percent and save 70 gallons of petroleum each year. If used in a light duty passenger vehicle, the powertrain will cut emissions by the same percent as it displaces 575 gallons of petroleum yearly.

Mission Motor is committed to sustainability in operations, full-cycle sustainability in product design and manufacturing, and social sustainability in the relationships between the company, employees, and the local community. Examples of this commitment include designing products so that they can be returned and reused at the end of their useful life, and locating the research, engineering, and assembly facility in downtown San Francisco so that employees can walk or bike to work.