Daimler Truck North America is choosing a new site for zero-emission vehicle research, and Portland officials hoping to win the project want to make it easier for the company to qualify for tax breaks.
Businesses typically must increase local hiring by 10% to qualify for five years of enterprise zone property tax breaks. With more than 3,000 Portland employees at its headquarters, research facilities and factories in Portland’s Swan Island industrial area, Daimler ordinarily would have to hire 300 more workers to qualify for the enterprise zone incentives.
A proposal before the Portland City Council on Thursday describes an expansion greater than $25 million, tied to “150 high wage Daimler Truck engineering positions and likely future investments as the global electric truck market increases.”
So Portland’s economic development agency wants city commissioners to waive the job requirement. State law allows such waivers, but city officials say Portland has done so only once before, in 2005.
Oregon’s enterprise zone program is used primarily by large tech companies, which collected more than $180 million in tax savings for their data centers last year. But some manufacturers use it, too. Daimler received $1.7 million in property tax incentives through the enterprise zone program last year for prior expansions.
Officials with Daimler and the city declined to describe the project in detail. The proposal before the City Council says the company is considering Portland and other, unspecified locations, for “cutting-edge research, development and testing of electric and hydrogen fuel cell trucks.”
The German company spun off from Daimler AG in 2021. It already has substantial engineering and electric vehicle manufacturing on Swan Island, and a proving ground for new technologies in Madras.
The Daimler trucking lineage in Portland dates to the 1940s, when Consolidated Freightways started making trucks in Portland. Daimler bought that company’s Freightliner business in 1981 and now makes trucks under that name.
In 2013, Daimler received tax incentives valued at nearly $20 million to build a new, regional headquarters in Portland. The $150 million facility opened in 2016 and in the intervening years Daimler has made Portland a hub for its electric vehicle research.
— Mike Rogoway | [email protected] | 503-294-7699
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