Push on for electric-car adoption

STAYING CURRENT: Several companies, including Fidelity Investments, are implementing electric-vehicle charging stations for their employees. Above, a car charges in the company’s parking garage at 900 Salem St. in Smithfield. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
STAYING CURRENT: Several companies, including Fidelity Investments, are implementing electric-vehicle charging stations for their employees. Above, a car charges in the company’s parking garage at 900 Salem St. in Smithfield. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

At times, 2013 felt like the year of the electric car in Rhode Island.
Helped by federal stimulus funds, the state financed the construction of 50 new charging stations at key locations like hospitals, college campuses and downtown Providence parking garages.
The R.I. Office of Energy Resources was joined in a vigorous electric-vehicle promotion campaign by Project Get Ready Rhode Island, a local group funded by the Rocky Mountain Institute.
At dealerships, the rollout of high-profile electric models like the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf two years earlier prompted owners to install charging stations on their lots to service the new inventory.
And even though it doesn’t have a single dealership in the state, popular and exclusively electric manufacturer Tesla Motors built a standalone Supercharger station in East Greenwich at the end of the year.
Electric-vehicle sales continue to grow in Rhode Island and nationally, but when the rapid adoption proponents expect will happen is anyone’s guess.
From the perspective of dealers, electric vehicles still make up a very small segment of what has been a booming automobile industry, about 3.7 percent of the total automobile market includes electrics, according to figures from the Electric Drive Transportation Association.
So now that federal stimulus funding has dried up and a network of charging stations exists throughout New England, what’s the next step for Rhode Island’s electric-car boosters?
If anything, their goals have become even bolder: to have 43,700 zero-emission electric vehicles registered in the state by 2025. Currently the R.I. Department of Motor Vehicles has 350 such cars registered.
To get there, the state announced in September that it is forming an electric-vehicle working group to come up with new short and long-term policy recommendations to push adoption forward.
“The state’s focus is evolving,” said Marion Gold, director of the Office of Energy Resources, about electric cars. “We did not expect [adoption] to take off like a rocket. It takes time for people to see electric vehicles on the road. We are working with neighboring states and even Canadian premiers to create a charging-station system that transcends state and even national boundaries.” As part of that evolution, the working group’s focus is likely to include not just infrastructure, but incentive programs for electric-vehicle purchases.
Along with federal incentives, some states offer their own incentives – Massachusetts offers rebates of up to $2,500 for motorists who buy electric vehicles – but Rhode Island has yet to join them.
A permanent incentive program like Massachusetts’ would require new legislation, but the state has already secured $725,000 from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to support incentives for businesses or municipalities investing in other so-called “clean-energy” projects, such as solar panels, to also add electric car chargers, Gold said.
One concern of electric-vehicle advocates in other states that hasn’t cropped up in Rhode Island yet is the legal status of Tesla’s sales model, which eschews independent dealers in favor of direct retailing to customers.
It’s difficult to tell whether Rhode Island’s lengthy laws regulating the relationship between vehicle dealers and manufacturers would prohibit Tesla’s direct sales model.
Direct sales by a manufacturer with an existing dealer network is prohibited, but whether a manufacturer like Tesla without a separate dealer network could meet the rules for a dealer’s license is unclear.
Jack Perkins, executive director of the Rhode Island Automobile Dealers Association, said he thought it would be difficult for Tesla to meet all the state dealer conditions, but so far the issue hasn’t been tested by either Tesla or any pro-electric-vehicle groups.
Albert Dahlberg, founder of Project Get Ready Rhode Island, said he is taking a more regional focus to promote electric vehicles going forward. With the charging-station campaign complete, Project Get Ready Rhode Island dissolved this summer and now Dahlberg has co-founded a group called Drive Electric Cars New England, along with enthusiasts based in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Dahlberg said reaching out to auto dealers and large corporate employers about the value of electric vehicles is a primary focus of the new group, which is affiliated with the Electric Auto Association. In Rhode Island, promoting state incentives will also likely be a major focus.
Among dealers, Dahlberg said some are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about selling electric cars while others either don’t know much about them or are more interested in conventional gasoline vehicles.
Working with major employers is where Dahlberg sees the greatest potential for increasing the share of vehicles on the road being powered by electricity.
“Workplace charging is the best opportunity for expanding [electric-vehicle] adoption,” Dahlberg said. “Corporate campuses have a demographic that fits the profile: educated, higher income and interested in advanced technology. You have people commuting and leaving their car there to charge before driving home.”
A good example of how employers can spur electric-vehicle use is on display at Fidelity Investments’ sprawling Smithfield campus, where the financial-services firm last year installed charging stations in each of its three parking garages. Each station has two charging outlets.
Matthew Simoneau, Fidelity senior manager for real estate services in Rhode Island, said roughly 16 Smithfield employees have electric vehicles and as demand for the chargers has grown, the company just installed a second station in its largest garage.
Although that total seems small for such a large company, Simoneau said those who have purchased the cars since the chargers were installed all said the ability to plug in contributed to their purchase. •

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