Electric Vehicle Infrastructure
Electric vehicles represent incredibly advanced technology, and their manufacture can create many high-paying jobs in depressed communities across the United States. However, the lack of user-friendly, convenient, and rapid charging infrastructure presents an enormous obstacle to widespread adoption of these vehicles by the American public.
Energy Efficiency News reports that in the absence of national and state plans to develop these essential charging systems, local communities and municipalities have seized the initiative by partnering with private firms to build charging stations in high-traffic, public locations.
One of these firms, 350Green, has plans to roll out these stations in shopping centers in Albany, NY, Menlo Park, NJ, and Milbrae, Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Sunnyvale, CA. The planned stations will feature quick, efficient charging, and they will be installed at no cost to the individual municipalities.
Executives at 350Green believe that the early emphasis on developing home charging stations has limited the range and potential utility of electric vehicles, so they aspire to bring rapid charging stations to the places where potential users work and live.
350Green’s approach is to work with municipalities to meet the demand for electric vehicle charging at a fraction of the cost of other solutions. According to the company, this “reduces land use while also accelerating Return on Investment [ROI] in infrastructure costs, land/parking allocation[,] and energy costs.”
In San Francisco, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) is providing support to 350Green and ECOtality, another private firm closely involved in charging infrastructure development. Unlike 350Green, ECOtality is focusing on installing over 2,000 home charging stations. However, ECOtality plans to build at least 30 quick charging stations to supplement those installed in individual homes.
ECOtality is also leading the EV Project and will work in conjunction with over a dozen communities and municipalities in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia to install approximately 15,000 residential and commercial charging stations. The goal of this project is to work with local authorities to hasten the spread of electric transportation across the country.
Stories like those of 350Green and ECOtality show that electric vehicle infrastructure is spreading into unexpected parts of the country because communities and municipalities have decided to partner directly with private firms that are uniquely positioned to do this. If more local governments enter into these types of public/private partnerships, we can look forward to much more widespread adoption of absolutely zero emission transportation.
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