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http://www.kgw.com/news/business/Prius-Plug-in-gets-tested-at-PSU-95649089.html

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Portland is now the must showroom for electric car makers.  The latest is Toyota

Friday it turned over it's first Prius electric hybrid to Portland State University for testing. What the university finds will help Toyota decide if it has enough spark for America's highways.

"It's a demonstration phase to check the viability of this new technology," said Michael Rouse, Vice President of Philanthropy for Toyota USA.

Portland and five other locations were chosen to test drive and evaluate the cars in all types of weather conditions.

"You guys have a sensitivity to mixed mobility and we believe a vehicle like a Prius plug in is going to be part of that future," said Rouse.

Only 600 of the Prius plug-in's have been produced.  And despite Toyota's recent recall troubles Rouse says there is no cause for concern for safety.

"Toyota is going to great lengths to ensure and make sure that our customers understand that our vehicles are very, very safe."

For Portland State University being chosen for this experiment is another chance to solidify it as one of the state's greenest schools. PSU is currently test driving Toyota's RAV 4 all electric.

"It's contributing frankly to a very major societal issue that we face, how to deal with global warming with the development of alternative fuels," said Wim Wiewel, President of PSU.

Wiewel will be a test driver as well as moms, students and business people. They'll test the cars for 18 to 24 months. The cars have computers on board to make testing easy.

"It has the telematics to capture a lot of time of day, time of year, weather condition data and so forth, performance data by the car," said George Beard, with the Mark Hatfield School of Government at PSU.

 The Toyota hybrid plug in can travel about 13 to 15 miles on a charge.

Portland General Electric is also part of the test. The company is working with several electric car makers to determine what's need down the road to support plug-ins. Charles Allcock, Director of Economic Development at PGE says a federal grant will help speed up Oregon's electric fuel stations.

"We will have a thousand of the charging stations being put up in Oregon the end of this year and early next year.

The final cost of the hybrid plug won't be determined until after the test. If Toyota decided to put the plug-in on the market, the soonest would be in 2012.