That is the title of an article in the business section of my newspaper today written by Johathan J. Cooper of the AP. He writes that a block-long stretch of a downtown Portland, OR, street will have seven free electric charging stations from six different manufactures installed as part of a Portland State University two-year study. This study will examine which chargers get the most use, who is plugging in and what they do while their car soaks up the charge. The charging stations were unveiled last Tuesday. Drivers who can snag a parking space in front of one of these charging stations can charge for free but they will have to pay the normal parking meter fee.
Better understanding of driver habits will help engineers tailor the next-generation electric car to those needs, eliminating unneeded features and lowering the price, says GM's Shad Balch. Electric Avenue has one quick-charge station that can juice-up an EV in about 30 minutes. The other six stations are Level 2 chargers and can replenish most battery packs in 4 to 6 hours. All very interesting and no doubt will produce some useful information for Portland State's study.
The article mentioned that there are only 400 EV's registered in Oregon, so this study may be a little light on EV individual owner numbers as I'll bet that a relatively few people will make the most use of the charging stations and they will be getting the same few local EV owners charging away over and over during the two years of the study.
However, what caught my eye in the article was the mention that Oregon and Washington are working on an initiative to install charging stations along I-5, so that an electric vehicle will be able to travel the 580 miles on I-5 from the southern border of Oregon all the way to Canada. Nothing was mentioned about California planning to do the same thing, although "planners" were quoted as "hoping" to eventually extend the proposed West Coast Green Highway south to the Mexican border.
