The great transition to electric vehicles is underway for single-family homeowners who can charge their cars at home, but for millions of renters, access to charging remains a significant barrier.
By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press PORTLAND, Ore. — Stephanie Terrell bought a used Nissan Leaf this fall and was excited to join the wave of drivers adopting electric vehicles to save on gas money and reduce her carbon footprint.
Now, cities from Portland to Los Angeles to New York City are trying to come up with innovative public charging solutions as drivers string power cords across sidewalks, stand up their own private charging stations on city right-of-ways and line up at public facilities. The quickest place to charge is a fast charger, also known as DC Fast. Those charge a car in 20 to 45 minutes. But slower chargers which take several hours, known as Level 2, still outnumber DC fast chargers by nearly four to one, although their numbers are growing. Charging an electric vehicle on a standard residential outlet, or Level 1 charger, isn't practical unless you drive little or can leave the car plugged in overnight, as many homeowners can.
Amid the boom, dense city neighborhoods are rapidly becoming pressure points in the patchy transition to electrification. Similar initiatives to install pole-mounted chargers are in place or being considered in cities from New York City to Charlotte, N.C. to Kansas City, Missouri. The utility Seattle City Light is also in the early stages of a pilot project to install chargers in neighborhoods where people can't charge at home.
Policies that provide equal access to charging are critical because with tax incentives and the emergence of a robust used-EV market, zero-emissions cars are finally within financial reach for lower-income drivers, said Ingrid Fish, who is in charge of Portland's transportation decarbonization program.
Some European cities are far ahead of even the most electric-savvy U.S. cities. London, for example, has 4,000 public chargers on street lights. That's much cheaper — just a third the cost of wiring a charging station into the sidewalk, said Vishant Kothari, manager of the electric mobility team at the World Resources Institute.