The Best EV Charging Solution that No One is Talking About - Streetsblog
On Wednesday, Wired published a 1,800-word article devoted to solving the “critical” dilemma of how to keep electric vehicle fleets charged in dense urban areas.
Authors Aarian Marshall and Matt Simon consider a range of strategies to extend the, well, range of the average EV, including classifying EV charging as “a taxpayer-funded public good” that would lead to installing charging stations on public utility poles, convincing apartment developers and managers to install them on existing lots and newly built spaces with publicly subsidized rebates, and converting gas stations to rapid-charging hot spots rather than putting that land to other uses.
Whole paragraphs are devoted to the dangers of “charging deserts,” which the authors fret will leave the poor stranded unless the government subsidizes them on their journey to personally owned electric automobility and all the staggering debt, insurance, and maintenance burdens that come with it. (The average electric vehicle costs $56,437, or more than three times the annual income of a household of two living at the federal poverty line.)
“The goal is clear: Build more chargers,” Marshall and Simon write. “But in dense places, the eternal question is, where?”
For sustainable transportation advocates, the answer may seem pretty obvious: at the bus depot. But the article does not mention electric buses until its very last paragraph when the authors finally concede that “maybe you don’t have to own an EV to enjoy one.” Walking, biking and other forms of non-automotive mobility are not mentioned at all, save a one-sentence acknowledgment that putting every American into a car would probably be “dangerous for pedestrians” and “undercut the demand for public transit.” (Spoiler alert: they are already are.)
By Kea Wilson
