A jump-start for clean transportation
After a disappointing 2015, when cheap gasoline drove electric vehicle sales into the slow lane, this year’s market started with a roar.
In a single week, Tesla Motors booked 325,000 advance orders for its Model 3 — a surge that would nearly double the number of EVs on U.S. roads. Chevy’s comparable entry, the Bolt, will arrive in California showrooms even sooner.
Yet if nothing else changes by the time both 2017 models hit the streets, hordes of new EV owners will quickly find themselves asking a question today’s drivers have come to dread: Where can I plug in?
Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer. Across most of Northern and Central California, where EV adoption dramatically outpaces the rest of the nation, the network of public charging stations lags far behind.
How far? To avoid “range anxiety,” industry experts put the ideal ratio at one public charger for every four EVs. Right now, it’s one per 25. And that’s looking in the rearview mirror, not toward the growth ahead.
It’s not just convenience at stake. In California, transportation is the single largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 37% of the total — far more than any other source.
So in the fight against global warming, transportation electrification is a game changer. Hence Governor Brown has set a target of 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025.
Meeting that goal will require swift progress on a vast scale — something the state’s energy grid operators are uniquely able to provide. That’s why a rarely seen coalition that includes the Sierra Club, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the Greenlining Institute, and non-utility energy providers such as the Sonoma Clean Power Authority have joined PG&E in a new proposal to increase access to EV charging — and fast.
Under the agreement, PG&E would collaborate with charging station companies to install thousands of smart chargers at locations specifically chosen to help spur EV adoption, such as multi-unit apartment and condo complexes. Highway corridors would get DC fast chargers— which fully charge a Nissan Leaf in less than 30 minutes.
The program would also help employers provide workplace charging to soak up the excess solar energy flowing onto the grid during daytime hours. And, working with local organizations, the plan would place at least 15% of chargers in low-income and disadvantaged communities, where EVs have been slow to take off.
Why trust PG&E to make all that happen?
At its core, PG&E is an infrastructure company. Installing EV chargers isn’t easy or cheap, and their profit potential is uncertain. That’s the reason so few have been installed under today’s purely commercial incentives, despite the obvious demand. PG&E’s proposal would raise the average residential customer’s bill by 22 cents per month — less than a penny a day. That’s a nominal sum in return for the clean air, reduced carbon footprint, and other environmental benefits that we all reap from each new EV that rolls off the assembly line, whether we drive one or not.
The continued lack of public charging stations is a problem California can no longer afford. Climate change won’t wait. Neither should we.
In the fight against global warming, transportation electrification is a game changer.