Electric vehicles are the future; unprepared Ohio must get on board

... the General Assembly must consider changes in state law to leverage impending electric vehicle mass adoption to benefit the greatest number of Ohio consumers and leave no one behind.

Ready or not, electric vehicles are coming. Fifteen years after the first Tesla hit the pavement, electric cars and trucks are poised for mushrooming growth and eventual market dominance.

That’s a good thing both for the environment and for everybody in Ohio – whether or not they ever drive an electric vehicle – as long as we put the right public policies in place. The Citizens Utility Board of Ohio lays out the challenges and solutions in a new 28-page report, available at Cuboh.org/reports.

Car companies and the federal government are investing billions in transportation electrification – but it’s the customer who is making it happen. Just 2% of new cars in Ohio are electric vehicles today, but penetration is expected to reach 10% in a few years and 20% by the end of the decade.

The tipping point toward mass adoption is nearing because electric vehicles have many advantages over gas-powered vehicles: they are quieter, smoother, often quicker, and have low maintenance and no exhaust fumes.

At average Ohio home electricity rates, the cost to fuel an electric vehicle is equivalent to paying less than $1 per gallon for gas. These lower operating costs offset higher sticker prices and can already make an electric vehicle cheaper over its lifetime than a comparable gas car.

Another benefit: higher electricity sales to fuel electric vehicles would put downward pressure on the electric rates everyone pays by spreading utility cost recovery over additional kilowatt-hours. This would help even non-electric vehicle drivers.

But there are big challenges to accommodating large numbers of electric vehicles.

If lots of them plug in during periods of high electricity demand, expensive new investment will be required to beef up power grid capacity. This can be avoided with proper planning: if electric vehicles charge during off-peak periods, they can use the existing electric system without adding a lot of costs.

To make that happen, we need to put in place timevariant electric vehicle electricity rates that make it cheaper to charge during overnight off-peak periods and begin testing “smart charging” to automate this.

There are more questions to answer: What about the 30 to 40% of households who have no place to plug in at home?

How do we meet the need for fast-charging stations on interstate highways? What can workplaces and apartment buildings without charging infrastructure do?

What about people who may never have a car, let alone an electric one? How do we deliver the benefits of electric vehicles to neighborhoods with poor air quality that need them the most?

Finding answers to these challenges can ensure that everyone benefits from transportation electrification and that costs are not shifted to those who can least afford them.

But that won’t happen automatically: it’s up to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to put these issues on the table and begin statewide, collaborative planning.

And the General Assembly must consider changes in state law to leverage impending electric vehicle mass adoption to benefit the greatest number of Ohio consumers and leave no one behind. It’s time to get rolling.

Tom Bullock is executive director of Citizens Utility Board of Ohio.