San Jose Ups Number Of Electric Car Charging Stations
SAN JOSE (KCBS) – As gas prices continue to climb steadily, so are electric car sales - prompting Bay Area cities to ramp up the number of charging stations.
The Bay Area's two largest cities, San Jose and San Francisco, have been installing more electric vehicle charging stations this year. That's good news for Steve Gray, who commutes in his Nissan Leaf from Marin to San Jose.
"That would be horrible if I got down here and all of the chargers were filled," said Gray. "If I couldn't charge up, I'd be in trouble."
However, Gray said that finding a free charging station isn't the only problem electric car drivers face.
"To do a full charge it takes eight hours, and to do half a charge is four hours so if you're going somewhere that's 60 miles away you want to make sure that you can charge it up enough to make it back," said Gray.
KCBS' Mike Colgan Reports:
San Jose's sustainability officer Laura Stuchinsky said that the city will soon up its total number of charging stations to 49.
"We have a number of people who have called us saying, 'I'm driving from Marin, or I'm driving from Santa Cruz, will there be somewhere to charge up?' We're delighted to be able to say 'yes there are places to charge,'" said Stuchinsky.
Most of the charging stations are located downtown in Councilman Sam Liccardo's district.
"We're going to be at the forefront of this significant shift in technology," said Liccardo. "I can tell you that even now I've got homeowners associations downtown in the high rises that want to use their own money to install their own infrastructure to encourage electric car use in their own building. So people are excited about this and I expect that we're going to see this really explode over time."
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