(Image: City of Seattle)
City of Seattle officials continue to collect community feedback on a plan to install an electric vehicle charging facility on Broadway near Capitol Hill Station.
CHS reported on the plan and official insistence that the installation would not pit Tesla owners vs. bicyclists by sabotaging future extension of the Broadway bikeway prior to a Seattle City Light-hosted open house last week.
The city says it continues to collect feedback on “the proposed EV charging location” through this Thursday, March 14th. You can add your thoughts via email at [email protected].
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The Urbanist advocacy news site reports that the open house has “re-charged the debate about transportation priorities on Broadway.”
“At Wednesday’s open house, most conversations with city staff were focused on why the location is optimal for electric chargers,” the Urbanist writes. “But allocating public space is fundamentally about competing uses and opportunity cost.”
The Seattle City Light plan would install two direct current (DC) fast chargers capable of powering most electric vehicles in front of the Capitol Hill Station mixed-use developments under construction at Broadway and E Denny Way.
Meeting materials from the city’s open house are below.
Sadly the electric vehicle may not live up to the dream :
– you EV will guzzle down power at 13.5c a kWh at an alarming rate. Figure maybe $50-60 a month. City Light could do timed metering and provide reduced price (as PSE does on eastside), but instead you pay.
– the curbside charging can actually be more expensive than gas – fire 2-3 times more than regular rates.
– the license tabs will cost you $500+ because you have to pay the gas tax
– you will need to plugin every night especially if you have run the heater which reduces the range by half. If you want to go far, get another car..
I’m no electric vehicle fanboy and own an ICE car, but your comment is full of factual errors and half-truths.
– you EV will guzzle down power at 13.5c a kWh at an alarming rate. Figure maybe $50-60 a month. City Light could do timed metering and provide reduced price (as PSE does on eastside), but instead you pay.
At $0.135/kwh, assuming a electric car “mileage” of 26 kwh/100 mi (this is USDOE rating for Tesla 3, which is on the lower end; most electric cars run around 30 kwh/100mi), it would cost you $3.50 to drive 100 miles.
Compare this to an ICE, which even assuming very favorable gas mileage of 40 mpg and very favorable gas cost of $2.50/gal, it will cost you $6.25 to drive that same 100 miles.
So a lower mileage electric car is still almost half the cost of an higher mileage ICE car. I would venture that the average ICE, with realistic gas prices, is more than double the mileage cost of the average electric car.
– the curbside charging can actually be more expensive than gas – fire 2-3 times more than regular rates.
Well yeah, how much per gallon do you think it would cost for someone to come fill up your car while you work/shop/eat. Again, the average electric car charging at one of these stations is probably breaking even with the average ICE standard gas station price, per mile.
– the license tabs will cost you $500+ because you have to pay the gas tax
The electric car fee is $150. The rest of the high tab cost is the same that an ICE car would pay. Again, they aren’t paying a gas tax, so the state needs to offset that lost revenue somehow.
– you will need to plugin every night especially if you have run the heater which reduces the range by half.
Not true, unless your commute is 75+ miles each way. A Nissan Leaf has a minimum range of 150 miles and a Tesla 3 has a minimum range of 220 miles, acknowledging that various things can affect those ranges, but the same goes for ICE. Again, those are on the lower end of ranges, but I could go two weeks without charging on a Leaf, but my commute is only 5 miles each way.
And what’s wrong with plugging your car in every night? I would love if I could wake up every morning and my car’s gas tank was topped off.
If you want to go far, get another car.
A Leaf (the lower range electric car) would almost get you to Portland and would get you halfway to Spokane; most electric cars are above 200 mile range. That would cover 99% of my yearly driving needs.
The couple friends I know that have electric cars either use the money they save to rent an ICE for a long road trip or plan out their trips so they can take advantage of quick chargers during food stops. This is an early adopter problem and I think within 10 years, you’ll be able to drive anywhere in Washington on a single charge with your average electric car.
Oh yay, tech bro yuppies will have a place to charge their Tesla.