Homemade electric motorcycle sets record

Posted on 09/21/2011 by Ken Paulman

Kevin Clemens, who wrote yesterday’s story on nickel mining in Minnesota and Michigan, is also a bit of a gearhead.

Clemens, an engineer and writer, has also been building an electric motorcycle in his garage in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, with which he recently set a national land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

A caveat – the bike set a record in its weight class, which is under 150 kg. While some streamliner motorcycles can top 300 mph on the flats, Clemens was able to put his Honda in the books with an average speed of only 61 mph.

Still, that’s pretty fast for what is essentially a giant battery on wheels. But is Clemens satisfied?

“I’m already trying to figure out how to go back next year and go faster. 100 mph has a nice sound to it.”

Helmet-cam footage of the record run below.

How electric cars can help balance wind power

Posted on 09/14/2011 by Ken Paulman

Are electric cars the key to boosting wind power capacity?

It’s well known that wind power is intermittent, which means that wind farms typically do not have power outputs equal to their total capacity. And there are basically three ways of dealing with this.

One is to install more capacity than is needed over a broad area, another is to balance the load with quick-starting natural gas “peaker” plants (which are already used to improve reliability today), and the third is to have some sort of energy storage to absorb the peaks and supplement the lulls.

Electric cars have often been seen as a means of balancing renewable energy sources. As the theory goes, EVs are basically giant batteries on wheels, with enough of them plugged in, grid operators could use them to help absorb spikes from renewable power sources.

A new study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories puts some numbers to that theory. Researchers determined that if there were 2.1 million electric vehicles on the road in the seven states served by the Northwest Power Pool, an additional 10 GW of wind power could be added to the grid without a need for additional power plants for backup (as a point of reference, Oregon, the region’s wind power leader, currently has about 2 GW of installed capacity). This would be accomplished by using “Grid Friendly” charging technology that is responsive to grid conditions.

This is a tall order to be sure – 2.1 million cars would be about 13 percent of the existing vehicles on the road in the region. But if electric cars are shown to have utility in offsetting power production costs, it could make the case for additional — or continuing — incentives for buyers.

Photo by colannade via Creative Commons

Natural gas vehicle backers push for federal recognition

Posted on 08/30/2011 by Kari Lydersen

Fueling a CNG-powered Honda Civic in Los Angeles. (Photo by Scott Lowe via Creative Commons)

Electric vehicles are on a roll, with charging stations popping up in cities nationwide, federal subsidies for car buyers and much anticipation around the rollout of new cars.

But proponents of another type of vehicle say they are quietly laying the groundwork for an alternative to the electric car, and they wish they were getting more attention and federal support.

Vehicles that run on compressed natural gas (CNG) fuel emit about a quarter less carbon dioxide than gasoline engines and very low levels of compounds harmful to public health. Filling up on natural gas currently costs about one fourth to one half as much as traditional gasoline per mile driven. Fueling a natural gas vehicle can take only five to 10 minutes, compared to up to eight hours to recharge an electric car, and vehicles can go much farther on a tank of CNG than an electric battery.

So natural gas companies and other proponents – including energy mogul T. Boone Pickens — are calling for a “level playing field” in terms of government subsidies and urging consumers and automakers to consider natural gas vehicles.

But while the fuel for CNG vehicles may be cheap, the infrastructure is not. It can cost more than $1 million to install a commercial natural gas fueling station, whereas an electric car can plug into a standard household outlet. Even a 480-volt fast-charging station, which can charge a Nissan Leaf’s battery in under an hour, costs about $20,000.

A handful of cities, including Oklahoma City, Shreveport, Salt Lake City, San Diego and Los Angeles have enough CNG fueling stations to allow residents to dependably drive a natural gas vehicle around town. But many major cities and large swaths of the country lack public natural gas fueling stations. There are about 1,000 natural gas fueling stations nationwide, according to industry sources, with 40 to 50 percent of them available to the public. The website carstations.com lists about 1,350 public electric vehicle charging stations nationwide, though many cities and private companies have more in the works.

There is only one consumer vehicle on the market that runs solely on natural gas – the Honda Civic GX. It costs about $25,000, comparable to the all-electric Nissan Leaf, which the company advertises at $27,700 after incentives.

Many cars can be converted to run on both natural gas and traditional gasoline, and natural gas proponents say these are becoming increasingly popular with consumers. However, only certain vehicles – mostly American-made pickups and SUVs – can be legally converted, and the aftermarket conversions can cost around $10,000-$12,000.

Government support

The federal government and many state and municipal governments have offered or currently offer significant subsidies for electric vehicles, including state and federal tax breaks for buying electric vehicles and installing charging stations. Many city governments are also installing free charging stations and purchasing electric vehicles for city agencies.

Little federal support exists for natural gas vehicles. A $30,000 federal tax break for fueling stations expires at the end of the year, and given the cost of stations, proponents say it is relatively insignificant.

Some state governments are heavily backing natural gas vehicles, however. Oklahoma and Louisiana offer tax breaks that cover up to 50 percent of the cost of fueling stations or the purchase or conversion of natural gas vehicles, and other state governments are considering such measures. Many state alternative fuel incentives cover natural gas and electric vehicles equally.

Various municipalities have also converted part or all of their fleets of transit buses, garbage trucks and other heavy vehicles to CNG, as have private companies including United Parcel Service, AT&T and Waste Management.

An AT&T van fuels with compressed natural gas in Concord, California. (Photo by PG&E via Creative Commons)

“They say they are doing it for environmental reasons, but when it comes down to it it’s really economic,” said David Hill, vice president of natural gas economy for Encana, the Denver-based natural gas company.

Economies of scale mean it is more efficient for owners of numerous large vehicles to invest in the technology and their own fueling stations, since the more fuel they use the more quickly they can recoup their investment. The cost of filling a vehicle with CNG varies by location, as low as 78 cents for the mileage equivalent of a gallon of gasoline in Oklahoma City and around $2.50 in the Chicago area.

Expanding infrastructure

Kathryn Clay represents natural gas producers and distributors as executive director of the joint American Gas Association and America’s Natural Gas Alliance (AGA-ANGA). She also formerly specialized in electric vehicles in her role as vice president of research and technology policy for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and also working for U.S. Senate and House committees on energy and alternative fuels. Clay sees natural gas vehicles becoming increasingly common in the next decade as more natural gas stations are set up to fuel long-haul trucks and even barges.

Tractor-trailer trucks can efficiently burn liquefied natural gas (LNG), which involves separate fueling stations and which is not considered an option for smaller vehicles since it is more expensive to produce and has to be kept cold -– to maintain its liquid state — in cryogenic tanks. But Clay said it makes sense to build LNG and CNG stations in tandem. She sees such stations on trucking or shipping routes as forming a “trunk” of natural gas fueling stations, increasing the motivation for other companies to build stations on “branches” near those routes.

Natural gas industry leaders, including Encana and Oklahoma-based Chesapeake, are in the process of converting their own fleets to natural gas, building their own fueling stations and making the stations available to the public in an effort to build consumer interest.

Chesapeake has converted all its light duty trucks to natural gas and plans to convert about 5,000 vehicles within the next five years, according to director of market development Norman Herrera. Encana has built one station north of Denver, one in Shreveport, two in Canada and it has one under construction in Wyoming. The company also worked with the city of Grand Junction, Colorado, to build two fueling stations there.

“We’re building in the communities we’re operating in, so government fleets and the public can have access to fueling stations,” said Hill. He noted that the company also plans to convert its drilling rigs to operate on natural gas – currently 15 of their North American rigs do so.

Natural gas companies have also invested in or partnered with convenience stores and other gas stations to add natural gas fueling stations – a proposition which isn’t always easy since the infrastructure takes up a lot of space. Chesapeake has helped create 14 public fueling stations in Oklahoma and is planning more in other states, according to Herrera, who drives a bi-fuel Chevy Tahoe that runs on both gasoline and natural gas.

Also, natural gas companies note that when a home is already heated with natural gas, it is relatively simple to install an at-home fueling station for a vehicle.

The price of natural gas has plummeted in recent years because vast new deposits have become accessible because of new hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) techniques. While environmentalists and others criticize the process as potentially harmful to water supplies, natural gas industry spokespeople maintain that fracking is generally environmentally safe when done right, and they also point to the environmental issues involved with extracting oil for traditional gasoline and coal, which provides about half the nation’s electricity.

‘There’s room for all of us’

Natural gas vehicles are much more popular outside the U.S., with about 13 million in operation worldwide. In the U.S. there are about 110,000 to 125,000 natural gas vehicles on the roads, the majority of them buses, garbage trucks and other large vehicles in government or private fleets.

Natural gas proponents say that natural gas vehicles should be getting as much government support as electric vehicles.

“You want to have parity in alternative vehicles,” said Herrera. “You want both fuels to be to be treated equally.”

A House bill introduced last spring, the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions (NAT GAS) Act, would create incentives for natural gas vehicles, including increasing the tax break for fueling stations more than three-fold to $100,000 and offering incentives for purchasing natural gas and bi-fuel natural gas vehicles. It would provide tax credits of up to $7,500 for light duty passenger vehicles and up to $64,000 for heavy trucks.

But Clay said that given the lower price of natural gas, even without government support she thinks some consumers will eventually think it is worth their while to buy natural gas vehicles.

“The market will decide, and it will naturally segment,” said Clay, whose doctorate focused on the physics of battery technology. “Given today’s technology it’s going to be challenging to design a battery that can go 100 miles on one charge. Where range is important, natural gas would clearly have an advantage. In urban areas, maybe more people will go electric.”

Hill said he’d like to see more and equal subsidies for various types of alternative vehicles including propane, hydrogen and biofuel in addition to natural gas and electric.

“We need a portfolio of different fuels for different applications,” he said. “There’s room for all of us and we have room to grow.”

Kari Lydersen is a Chicago-based freelancer and author whose work appears in The Washington Post, The New York Times and other outlets.

This work by Midwest Energy News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

75 mpg … in the 1970s?

Posted on 07/29/2011 by Ken Paulman

From Mother Earth News - the car of the future?

As the Obama administration announces ambitious new fuel economy standards for America’s automakers, it’s worth reflecting on how advanced our cars have become. Today’s cars are more powerful, more efficient, and safer than ever, in large part because regulations have mandated it.

So it’s hard to imagine a future where cars average 54 mpg. If, after all these years, the best we can manage is an average of 27 mpg, how could we possibly double that in 15 years? Will technology move that quickly?

This morning, I came across an article from a 1979 issue of Mother Earth News about a hobbyist who’d converted his Opel CT into a hybrid, using an electric motor with a lawnmower engine to charge the batteries as backup – a similar setup to the Chevy Volt. The car, the owner claimed, topped out at 90 mph, had virtually unlimited range, and could get 75 mpg.

Granted, a vintage Opel is by no means safe, by modern standards (or even by 1970s standards). The point is that technology isn’t necessarily the barrier to higher mileage.

John German, a former automotive engineer, recently wrote a column for The Hill accusing automakers of “crying wolf” over stricter economy standards — noting a history of dire predictions over federal regulations — and explains how it’s market forces and institutional culture that hold back innovation:

If you hear automakers grumble that they cannot meet these fuel efficiency standards, don’t believe them — they are much better at innovation than they’re letting on. It is important to understand how risk adverse automotive engineers have to be. Just misplacing the accelerator pedal cost Toyota billions of dollars. Quality constraints are so severe that engineers are mired in a very conservative mindset that causes them to always underestimate what they can accomplish. Auto manufacturers not only have a plethora of new alternative fuel technologies to explore and develop, they also have plenty of on-the-shelf technologies they are in the process of deploying to make cars more fuel-efficient.

So a higher mileage standard doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll all be forced to drive around in kludged-together Opels. The automakers might have a few tricks up their sleeves that we’re not aware of.

Can electric cars revive Michigan?

Posted on 07/27/2011 by Ken Paulman

A recent USA Today story gives an overview of the progress American automakers have made in recent years, and also the challenges ahead. While larger factors such as cutting labor costs and restructuring supply lines (and, let’s be honest, building cars that aren’t junk) will be the main driving forces behind the industry’s revival, electric and hybrid cars will also be part of the picture.

What [GM CEO Dan] Akerson finds exciting, and believes is a mark of GM’s integrity and a harbinger of its success, is that the company continued to work on the controversial Chevy Volt extended-range electric car even during the distractions of Chapter 11.

“I want you to think of God Bless America playing in the background,” he says, knowing how this will sound: “Great nations make things. They don’t flip hamburgers and live on class-action suits. They make things.”

That ambition has also prompted a coalition of businesses, advocacy groups and individuals to kick off a campaign that it hopes will help revive Michigan’s auto industry by promoting electric cars.

The Built by Michigan campaign was formally launched with a series of events last week, and will promote policies to provide incentives for EVs – including rebates for car buyers (a bill proposed by U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabanow) and clean fuel standards.

One of the more interesting features from the site is this handy map, which shows all of the manufacturers in the electric car supply chain:

View Electric Vehicles: Built By Michigan in a larger map

It’s a good reminder that the auto industry extends well beyond the final assembly lines — all those parts have to come from somewhere, and Michigan, which has lost more than 120,000 auto industry jobs since 2006, could use the work.

You can also follow the campaign on Twitter.

Charging stations pop up at Midwest convenience stores

Posted on 06/07/2011 by Kari Lydersen

An electric vehicle charging station at a Kwik Trip store in Chanhassen, Minnesota. (Ken Paulman / Midwest Energy News)

A convenience store chain is installing free electric vehicle charging stations at stores in three Midwest states. But will the stations – essentially standard household outlets with a sign attached – really make a difference?

The family-owned Kwik Trip chain is installing the stations at all its new stores, a total of 25 so far in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. But the outlets only provide 110 volts, which, charging for the few minutes it takes to grab coffee and use the bathroom, would barely get someone out of the parking lot and down the block. Charging for an hour at that voltage might allow a typical electric vehicle to run three to five miles.

Kwik Trip officials and electric vehicle proponents acknowledge the limitations, but say the charging stations are a significant symbolic move and also lay the groundwork for more powerful charging stations in the future. With the infrastructure laid for 110-volt stations, Kwik Trip spokesman Dave Ring said, the company can more easily upgrade the stations to higher voltage if demand increases.

View Electric charging stations at Kwik Trip in a larger map

‘Ahead of the curve’

Charging facilities for electric cars are broken up into three tiers. Charging stations with 110-120 volts are considered Level 1, 240-volt chargers are Level 2 and much faster-charging stations of about 480 volts, with direct rather than alternating current, are Level 3. The 480-volt stations can recharge 80 percent of a typical electric car’s battery within half an hour, though these stations are expensive to install and not all electric cars can handle the voltage.

The Kwik Trip charging stations are rarely used, Ring said, “but we want to be ahead of the curve instead of reacting to it.”

Ring said Kwik Trip did not get any government subsidies or tax breaks for the charging stations, though they might seek such incentives in the future, especially if they install more expensive fast-charging stations.

Ted Lowe, a member of the Fox Valley Electric Auto Association in northern Illinois, compared 110-volt charging stations like Kwik Trip’s to “filling your gas tank with a straw.” Nonetheless, he said charging stations located throughout urban and suburban areas are key to encouraging people to drive electric cars. He said such stations help people change their prevailing habit of driving hundreds of miles before refueling.

“If you’re just going from home to work to school and back you don’t really need that much range,” he said.

Which comes first?

The availability of charging stations is widely seen as a chicken/egg issue. There is not a large incentive for private companies to install charging stations – especially more expensive high-voltage ones – until more people have electric cars; but people are less likely to buy electric cars if they aren’t confident they can easily recharge them on the go.

Cities including Chicago, Kansas City, Madison, and St. Paul have installed or are in the process of installing electric vehicle charging stations of various voltages in public parking areas and on private property. On the West Coast, public and private entities are cooperating to build a “Green Highway” of charging stations from San Diego to Vancouver.

In Chicago, city officials are installing 280 charging stations, extending deep into the suburbs, where customers can pay for level 2 or 3 charges. Many will be powered by solar panels.

Private parking garages and malls, where cars will presumably be parked for longer periods of time, have also increasingly installed charging stations as pilot projects, though they are still not widespread. It remains to be seen whether many private or government parking areas will offer charging for free or whether customers will pay for the electricity.

“Most gas stations don’t make money on gasoline, they make it on soda and coffee and potato chips,” said Environmental Law and Policy Center executive director Howard Learner. “So it may well be that certain service stations or toll plazas will offer car charging to get people in the store to buy those things. It’s a rapidly emerging market. We expect most people will tend to charge cars at home overnight when (electricity) market prices are lowest. But many will want the convenience of charging during the day.”

An early fan

Video producer Ben Nelson lives in Oconomowoc, Wisc. near Milwaukee and owns an electric motorcycle and a vintage 1970 electric Citicar vehicle. After a friend told him about the charging station at a local Kwik Trip, he called the company asking for a list of locations. He said Kwik Trip’s charging stations have made him more likely to visit the convenience stores, especially the one near his home that is also near restaurants and a grocery store.

Nelson, who is helping to start a Wisconsin chapter of the Electric Auto Association, said he was impressed Kwik Trip installed the stations without any fanfare.

“Usually any time a new electric vehicle charging station goes in it’s a big thing with TV cameras, the whole nine yards,” he said. “One thing I really love about Kwik Trip is that they just went ahead and did it. It wasn’t a public relations thing for them.”

Paul Scott, vice president of the group Plug In America and owner of an electric car in southern California, said he thinks more convenience stores and gas stations will follow Kwik Trip’s lead. He said he himself patronizes a grocery store specifically because it has a level 2 charging station. A 110-volt station, he said, “might get you a mile in 10 to 15 minutes of charging.”

“Is that worth it? Personally I would say yes,” he said. “Whenever you have an opportunity to charge particularly when someone’s willing to give it to you for free, you plug in.”

Kari Lydersen is a Chicago-based freelancer and author whose work appears in The Washington Post, The New York Times and other outlets.

This work by Midwest Energy News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

EVs and car-sharing: A match made in heaven

Posted on 02/15/2011 by Ken Paulman

Don't worry. He's housebroken.

Electric cars, while a smart choice for a lot of people, aren’t going to be a practical transportation solution for everyone, at least at the moment. If you live in an apartment, for instance, and park on the street, you probably won’t have a place to charge up. Or perhaps you’re a one-car family that needs to be able to travel long distances once in a while.

Sure, the Chevy Volt and other plug-in hybrids address those concerns, but until battery technology dramatically improves and charging stations proliferate, purely electric vehicles are going to have limited application.

There are, however, situations where an electric car makes a lot more sense than one powered by gasoline. Car-sharing, for example.

Services like Hourcar in the Twin Cities, I-GO and Zipcar in Chicago, and Community Car in Madison are popping up all over the country. Chicago’s car-sharing services are playing a major role in that city’s effort to expand electric car infrastructure.

Car-sharing eliminates the logistical problems that may come with private ownership of an EV. Since the cars need to be kept at specific locations, they can always be stored near a charger. The services are designed for short trips, eliminating “range anxiety.” And EVs don’t have to be filled with gas or taken to the shop for regular oil changes.

Adam Aston, writing for OnEarth Magazine, discovered another advantage. EVs used for car sharing can also be small and relatively spartan, requiring fewer batteries and smaller motors. They’re typically used by a single driver in a big city, making a tiny car like a Smart ForTwo ideal. Aston also found the electric ForTwo a better performer in traffic than its gasoline counterpart, as well as being more spacious.

Smart’s dimensions will never offer the tank-like comforts of an SUV, but as I dart through holes in traffic that no other car could fit and nimbly dodge potholes, even on slushy roads, I’m grinning. The ED may be pint sized, but it’s got great self-confidence, a plus for any newcomer to New York.

And perhaps more importantly, the EVs used by car-sharing services will provide an incentive for public-private partnerships to install charging stations, making private ownership of electric cars more practical.

Photo by harry_nl via Creative Commons

Cold facts about electric cars

Posted on 02/10/2011 by Ken Paulman

"Good thing it's not electric, or you'd REALLY be screwed."

It was approximately 10 degrees below zero this morning when our story on efforts to expand electric vehicle adoption in Midwest cities went live on the site. So now’s as good a time as any to address the ever-present hand-wringing about how electric cars will perform in the cold.

Find a news story – any news story – on electric cars, and, if you have the stomach for it, peruse the comment thread. Invariably, someone will bring up the fact that battery performance drops off dramatically in cold weather.

From that, we’re supposed to conclude that electric cars are unsuitable for any climate outside Los Angeles, as though the prospect of the cars operating in cold temperatures simply hadn’t dawned on the world’s top automotive engineers.

→

Midwest playing catch-up in preparing for electric cars

Posted on 02/10/2011 by Tom Vandyck

St. Paul\’s new Transit Connect van is running errands for the city\’s parks department. (Photo by Jenna Hartwig Wade)

In a bid to catch up with their coastal counterparts, Midwestern cities are racing to acquire electric vehicles and build charging stations – steps backers say will save on gasoline, cut emissions, and show drivers that there is life after the internal combustion engine.

The city of Chicago just announced plans to build an extensive vehicle charging infrastructure reaching well into the surrounding suburbs. Chicagoland will be dotted with 280 fast-charging stations that will enable EV drivers to charge their batteries to 80 percent of capacity in under half an hour.

And officials in St. Paul, Minnesota, recently received the first of three battery-powered Ford Transit Connect vans they plan to add to the city fleet over the coming months. At the same time, the city plans to install thirty charging stations, most of which will be open to private electric vehicle owners as well.

St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman said the vans are part of a region-wide strategy “to have more electric vehicles, and have more charging stations, so that people can transition into a greener, cleaner technology.”

Coleman anticipates the city will be replacing more and more gasoline-powered vehicles with electric ones in the future.

Not just for the West Coast anymore

Adoption of electric vehicle infrastructure in the Midwest lags behind traditional green bastions like Portland, Seattle and San Francisco. But a number of cities, such as Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, Madison and Indianapolis, are developing ambitious plans to make up for lost time.

Chicago does not have any full-size electric vehicles in its city fleet road yet, but plans to acquire them in the near future, said Joshua Milberg, the first deputy commissioner at the city’s environmental department.

“We are looking at what are the right options for electrification of the city fleet,” said Milberg.

Chicago already has a number of smaller, low speed EVs, and is currently looking into electric buses, cars and even trash trucks. Milberg expects that within the next decade, twenty percent of all vehicles on Chicago’s roads will be either hybrids or fully electric. But “We still have a lot to learn about electric vehicles and charging,” he said.

Eyes on the bottom line

Meanwhile, St. Paul is closely monitoring its first all-electric Ford Transit Connect, being used by the city’s park service to ferry supplies and equipment between facilities.

The vehicle – a boxy delivery van – can travel at highway speeds and has zero tailpipe emissions. Perhaps even more importantly for cash-strapped municipal governments, it is projected to be much cheaper to operate than its gasoline-powered competitors.

St. Paul currently spends $3 million annually on gasoline and diesel. The fuel cost for a gas-powered Ford Transit Connect is estimated at $10,000 over six years, compared to $2,600 for the electric model. With gas prices at their highest levels since 2008, and expected to rise further, mayor Coleman said overall savings would be “absolutely significant.”

EVs will also contribute to cleaner air – an estimated one-third of Minnesota’s air pollution is caused by cars and trucks.

The St. Paul EV project is the result of a public-private partnership between the city government, non-profit groups (including Fresh Energy, which publishes Midwest Energy News), Xcel Energy, the Ford Motor Company, and several other private enterprises.

The city is spending $286,000 in federal stimulus dollars on the project. At the vehicle’s recent formal introduction, local leaders said the stimulus plan is essential to renewable energy initiatives.

“Ten years from now, we’ll almost chuckle at the fact that we stood here and celebrated a couple of new cars,” said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. “But it is critically important to have government lead the way on this, because we need to move forward faster, and in a period of time when the economy is slowed, we can both clean the environment and create new jobs.”

Charging infrastructure

Similar private-public partnerships are underway in Chicago, which is working with car-sharing services i-Go and Zip Car to build new charging stations.

“We feel that’s a great way to introduce all electric vehicles to a broad range of consumers,” said Milberg.

In the Twin Cities, charging stations will initially be concentrated around the Central Corridor light rail line between St. Paul and Minneapolis, which is currently in the early stages of construction. The first units will be rolled out starting this spring, long before the rail line’s planned completion in 2014.

Recently, St. Paul has been getting questions from prospective private EV owners, who want to be able to charge their vehicles while parked downtown, said Anne Hunt, the city’s environmental policy director.

St. Paul plans to install thirty publicly available charging points over the coming months, said Hunt. “Most of them will be in parking ramps, but we’ll have a few that will be on the streets – like a parking meter, but it’s a charging station.”

Some of St. Paul’s charging stations will be solar powered, enabling fully carbon-neutral recharging.

“We’re trying to make sure the Twin Cities are EV ready” said Hunt. “If anything, we’re a little bit behind the curve.”

Tom Vandyck is an international freelance writer based in St. Paul. In addition to being syndicated by the International Features Agency in Amsterdam, his work has appeared in the Boston Globe and the Christian Science Monitor.

This work by Midwest Energy News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Tag Archives: electric vehicles

Homemade electric motorcycle sets record

How electric cars can help balance wind power