The City of San Francisco is once again putting its money where its ever-greener mouth is.
The latest generation of electric vehicles, including the Nissan Leaf (pictured here), takes about six hours to charge up from scratch. City-owned charging stations would be used to top off, for charging up quickly between stops or the drive home. San Francisco Department of the Environment
By Bill Picture
Published: June, 2011
The City of San Francisco is once again putting its money where its ever-greener mouth is. San Francisco has set some of the country’s most aggressive carbon emission reduction goals for itself, committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by next year.
To help meet that goal, Mayor Ed Lee announced last month that 80-plus state-of-the-art electric vehicle charging stations will be installed throughout the City by year’s end, and that free charging will be available at City-owned stations through 2013. More than a third of San Francisco’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, and private vehicles account for more than 90 percent of those emissions.
The 80 new charging stations will be installed in City-owned public parking garages throughout San Francisco and at San Francisco International Airport. Most of those garages already have older-model charging stations that were installed in the late 1990s. Those older charging stations, like the older-model electric vehicles they were designed to charge, are now considered obsolete. That said, some of those older-model electric vehicles are still on the road. Thus, the City intends to swap out most of the older stations with new ones, but leave a few of the older stations in place.
In addition to already having the infrastructure in place for the new charging stations, the public parking garages receiving those stations also allow access to the stations for more electric vehicle owners than street-level stations would.
We want to put the charging stations where there will be the most turnover, said Bob Hayden, who manages the San Francisco Department of the Environment’s Electric Vehicle Program. We don’t want one car plugging in and staying there for eight hours.
Hayden says electric vehicle owners should be charging up at home overnight and using the City’s stations for topping off, to charge up enough for the ride home after a day of shopping, errands or work. The time it takes to fully charge an electric vehicle from scratch or empty varies from one maker to the next, but the average time for newest-generation models is about six hours.
So it makes the most sense for people to charge overnight at their residence, Hayden added. [Our stations] are more for convenience charging.
The City hopes its latest move will help build the local market for electric vehicles. Further, Mayor Lee announced that the new charging stations will be powered by carbon-free electricity generated at the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The City’s goal is to make it affordable and convenient for all San Francisco residents and visitors to charge their electric vehicles when they are away from their home charging stations, said Mayor Lee in a written statement.
By providing free public charging powered by clean, carbon-neutral SFPUC [San Francisco Public Utilities Commission] power, San Francisco will help electric vehicle users avoid range anxiety and build confidence in the new technology.
Hayden doesn’t know exactly how many San Franciscans currently own electric vehicles, but he’s confident that the number is growing steadily based on the growing numbers of electric vehicles he sees on the City’s street each day.
Late last year, a San Francisco resident was the first person in the world to receive delivery of a Nissan Leaf, the latest addition to the new generation of 100 percent electric vehicles. The occasion was celebrated with a press conference where then-Mayor Gavin Newsom reported that Nissan had received more orders for the Leaf from San Francisco and Bay Area dealers than from dealers in any other part of the country.
Demand for the Leaf hasn’t slowed since then, but deliveries have as a result of the March 11 mega-quake in Japan.
San Francisco isn’t the only Bay Area municipality to install electric charging stations and offer free charging. The Transportation Authority of Marin flipped the on switch on two free charging stations in San Rafael back in April of this year, and announced plans to install four more stations in Marin County before the year is out.
The idea, according to Hayden, is to build a network of electric vehicle charging stations by working with neighboring cities and counties.
People really need to know that the infrastructure is there before they’ll feel comfortable buying these cars, Hayden explained. That’s what we’re trying to do.
