As Detroit has slowed amid financial catastrophes at the makers of traditional vehicles, L.A. companies have sped ahead in the race to develop the coming generation of electric and hybrid-electric vehicles and components for them.

In recent weeks, a plant that makes electric trucks that service the ports opened in Harbor City, and an electric sport-car maker announced its intention to build a plant in Los Angeles County. Meanwhile, Miles Electric Vehicles Inc. in Santa Monica plans to introduce a mass-market car as early as this year while companies such as Quallion LLC in Sylmar are concentrating on advanced battery technology to serve electric vehicles.

They aren’t alone. Calstart, a non-profit organization that advocates for improved transportation, counts more than 50 companies in the L.A. area that are involved in developing some kind of technology for alternative fuel vehicles. And more companies will likely spring up as the federal government pours billions of dollars into tech research and development.

In fact, Southern California Edison, a utility company that serves 13 million customers, is getting its grid ready for bigger electricity demand that will result when all these new cars plug in.

“There’s going to be multiple nodes of the clean vehicle industry in the United States, and do I think Southern California will be one of them? Absolutely yes,” said Bill Van Amburg, senior vice president at Calstart.

Los Angeles has attracted green vehicle companies for a slew of reasons. It has ready access to two of the largest ports in the world – the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach – for imported materials, a large talent pool drawn from the aerospace industry, and renowned research universities such as Caltech and UCLA. Studios full of car designers are here, and Los Angeles is in a green-friendly state that has adopted strict vehicle emission standards, which has made the need for transportation innovation more urgent.

As the auto industry shifts away from gas-guzzling SUVs to eco-friendly cars, billions – if not trillions – of dollars are up for grabs. While it’s difficult to quantify what the alternative fuel vehicle industry will be worth in the near future, the market for lithium rechargeable batteries – the kind that will likely power the all-electric and hybrid cars of the future – is now worth about $8 billion alone, and should double in six years.

“What’s at stake is the next wave of manufacturing wealth because somebody, whether it’s Taiwan or China or Korea, will be at the top of the new order of automobile makers,” said Mike Madden, manager of industry development at the Automotive Consulting Group in Torrance. “And Los Angeles has all the natural facilities to be in on that.”

Power up

Many green transportation companies are hiring employees and opening facilities even in the economic downturn, making them a rare bright spot in a county where unemployment is projected to edge toward 11 percent by 2010.

For instance, Tesla Motors Inc., a San Carlos company behind a high-end all-electric sports car, is considering opening a manufacturing plant at a defunct aerospace factory in Long Beach. That facility would employ hundreds and build 20,000 all-electric seven-passenger sedans a year.