The most common response is a variation on “I want to do my part to save the planet.” (And save money on gasoline too.) People often ask me whether they should buy an electric car. Citizens must demand many small solutions,” they focus on reforming building codes to decrease energy consumption. In an opinion piece titled “Climate change is a big problem. Meantime, guest contributors Hal Harvey and Justin Gills write in The Times that buying a Prius alone won’t fix climate change. Lyft clearly wants as much subsidy money for EVs and charging stations as possible to make sure its drivers are able to afford the requirement. The state now requires that 90% of the miles traveled by ride-hailing companies such as Lyft and Uber be covered by electric cars. The special interest in question is Lyft. And the more wealthy people are chased out of the state by high rates, the less revenue is available for state programs. As stocks go up and down, so does the state’s revenue. California’s budget is disproportionately dependent on wealthy people and the income that comes from their investments. Personal incomes of more than $2 million a year would be taxed an additional 1.7%, for a total marginal rate of 15.05%, the highest in the country. I called the three big EV charger companies to ask about the reliability problems and what they’re doing to solve them. The study’s methodology could account for the difference, but 20 percentage points is quite wide. The Bay Area study noted that although it found only 75% of public chargers were operable, the companies were reporting 95% to 98% uptime to the California Air Resources Board. There’s been little to no discussion about how that 97% figure will be enforced. Gavin Newsom recently signed a bill to require information collection, and the state says it’s studying the issue. But it’s unclear thus far how company performance will be determined. All are under pressure to show profits in a business in which it’s unclear where charging profits will come from sans subsidies.īoth the federal government and California will require the recipients of billions of dollars in grants and other subsidies to maintain stations with 97% reliability. One of them, Greenlots, was recently bought by Shell. Other charger companies are funded by venture capital, or have gone public through special purpose acquisition companies. In ChargePoint’s business model, machines are sold to site owners, who assume the responsibility to keep them in working order. The marketers - think EVgo, Electrify America, ChargePoint - might be responsible for service and maintenance, or might not. The site owner, often retailers that include Whole Foods as well as individual mini-mart owners. Installing and operating a charging station involves a mix of players. One reason: Responsibility for service and maintenance is diffuse. The person on the toll-free EVgo line didn’t know why and said she’d help find another location. One was marked “unavailable.” The other wouldn’t charge after I plugged it into my vehicle. I found supposedly public chargers in buildings with no public access, including one up the ramp of a Long Beach apartment building with the entrance marked “Residential Parking Only.” Neither of the two EVgo chargers were working. I ran across a Rivian driver who spent 15 minutes on the phone with Electrify America to get his app to work with the charger. I found plexiglass screens placed over ChargePoint touch screens throughout Long Beach that rendered a credit card purchase impossible. My experiences on the trip illustrate the frustration.
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