Mike Ryan, co-founder of Salinas’s own fledgling electric carmaker, Green Vehicles, sounds a little frustrated. 


For more than a year, the start-up that moved into Salinas’s old Firestone plant, has waited for state funding to ramp up production of a brand-new 2.0 version of the company’s uber-compact three-wheeled Triac sedans. 


“We’re getting close, but I’m almost embarrassed to say that,” Ryan says. 


The California Energy Commission formally awarded the company a $2 million grant five months ago after promising it in late 2009. It was one of several grants the state approved to jump-start California’s green energy industry. The city of Salinas kicked in some $700,000 and Ryan says private investors are also waiting to climb aboard once the $2 million is in the bank.


Ryan insists the funding is safely allocated and can’t fall prey to Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget axe. But he says the bureaucratic wheels have simply turned at an achingly slow pace. 


“There really isn’t a sticking point. There isn’t a thing in the way,” Ryan says, adding that he thinks the money will arrive within weeks. “There was quite a bit of funding that had to go through the energy commission, more than they’re used to handling. It’s a matter of process.”


Currently, five assembly line workers are turning out a trickle of the company’s Moose mini-vans at the Firestone plant, and Ryan says it’s a struggle to make ends meet. 


“We’re pretty tight,” he notes. But he says bill collectors understand the company will make good on its commitments. 


“When you have a grant, that’s pretty good credit,” he says. 


Ryan now expects the first new Triacs, with a 100-mile range between charges and a price tag of $25,000 to roll off Salinas assembly lines beginning in the last quarter of this year. He hopes to make 2,000 cars in 2012, and turn out more than 11,000 by 2015. 


Earlier this year, the company announced a partnership with Fremont-based Leyden Energy to make batteries for its cars in the Firestone facility. It would be a step toward making Salinas the sort of high-tech hub Mayor Dennis Donohue envisioned when he announced the city would not only offer Green Vehicles a nearly three-quarter million dollar assist, but also help the company take advantage of tax credits for hiring local residents. 


So far, just four local residents have been hired, and the company lags in meeting requirements that it hire one local resident for each $32,500 of the more than $300,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant funding the city has already provided the company. 


Still, Ryan is optimistic about building a niche market for his lower-priced electric cars, which will be sold directly to consumers, not through dealerships. 


He hopes to source about 75 percent of parts from the West Coast, a move he believes will help attract buyers. 


But as tiny Green Vehicles prepares to ramp up production, so do giant Detroit and Japanese automakers. Analysts differ on the company’s chances for success. At the Rocky Mountain Institute, analyst Matt Mattila has said government funding gives fledgling carmakers a boost to go up against big competitors while other analysts argue the company’s small size and under-capitalization give it little chance for survival. 


Mayor Donohue has said that even if Green Vehicles goes under, the start-up is a building block for making Salinas a new hotbed of high-tech creativity, just like Silicon Valley was three decades ago.