Vegas area, casinos charge ahead with electric vehicle parking stations

LAS VEGAS — As more electric vehicles hit the streets, additional places to charge them are popping up in Las Vegas.

Casino companies, Clark County, shopping centers and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, now offer charging stations.

Las Vegas city planners are exploring ways to make the city more electric-vehicle friendly as they put together a 2050 master plan, the Las Vegas Sun reports.

“We’re moving toward electric,” Tom Volk, a businessman from Phoenix, said as he charged his Tesla Model 3 at the Railroad Pass Travel Center in Henderson.

The car has a maximum range of 310 miles (498 kilometers), a little more than the 300-mile (483-kilometer) distance to Las Vegas, so Volk said he also stopped to charge the car in Arizona. But he said the decision to go with an electric car over a traditional gas engine was about “style and lifestyle.”

“With the power and the comfort and the luxury, you’re not trading off as much anymore with these vehicles,” he said.

In July, Tesla and Caesars Entertainment partnered to open a solar-powered facility, dubbed a supercharging station, near the High Roller observation wheel on the Las Vegas Strip.

It is the first site in Nevada to feature 24 V3 hookups for Tesla owners to rapidly charge batteries for about 180 miles of range in about 15 minutes.

Caesars has electric vehicle chargers at all its properties in Nevada. The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles reports nearly 7,000 registered electric vehicles, up from 1,200 in 2015 but still less than 1% of all registered vehicles.

That compares with more than 318,000 electric vehicles registered in neighboring California.