Utilities Are Rosy on Charging EVs, But Clueless on Making it Happen in Big Cities

Utilities are in a bit of a bind when it comes to electric cars. They really want it to happen ?€"- what industry wouldn't want to horn in on the lucrative monopoly enjoyed by oil companies all these years? -?€" but they also don't want to spend a whole lot of time and resources thinking about how it's all going to work. The result is an underdeveloped plan to welcome EVs, even though the cars are right around the corner.

In an online forum Thursday conducted by the Electric Drive Transportation Association, representatives of several key utilities outlined a rosy scenario that was somewhat short on details. I've noticed a pattern of this, recently attending an event on wiring New York that was more lofty speculation than on-the-ground planning. Just how will urban, apartment-dwelling residents recharge EVs, anyway?

I asked that question and got an interesting answer from Mike Rowand, director of Advanced Customer Technology at Duke Power. "Early EVs will not be for everyone," he said. "It may be several years before they come into use in some places. In New York, car-sharing [membership groups that let people pick up parked cars and trucks when they need them] may be the first opportunity for driving EVs."

Duke's online pronouncements on EVs are a bit vague, and at the forum Rowand said that the company will not be putting a lot of public charging on the ground before the first cars are delivered at the end of the year. The utility's goal, he said, is to be "just ahead of the consumer," and that means waiting to see what the market does, and where it develops.

That will come as a disappointment to Gothamites, who probably presume they're at the head of the queue. Smart USA introduced its battery version in Brooklyn this week, and the city will be on the list to access some of the 250 U.S.-market cars in a pilot program. But Smart hasn't worked out how those cars will charge, either.

Utilities, Rowand said, "can't be ready on day one for every single application. EVs need to be for families with garages at first, then other models will play out." Yeah, but the world is increasingly urban, and many EVs (including the electric drive Smart) are being touted as "city cars." But there aren't many garages in urban cores.

Still, utilities, especially in California, say they're ready to charge large numbers of EVs. California will probably be the number one early adopter state, because it's pretty green (it hosts 25 percent of U.S. hybrid sales), has EV-friendly laws, plus a unique $5,000 cash rebate.

According to Doug Kim, director of EV readiness at Southern California Edison (which has the largest utility fleet of green cars in the U.S.), "Southern California will be one of the first and potentially largest market for EVs. We're working to ensure that our distribution network is ready to reliably serve customers." Kim estimated that Edison's 50,000-square-mile coverage area could be home to a whopping 450,000 plug-in cars and trucks by 2020.

Prodded by me about urban charging, Kim talked about charging stations in the workplace, at gas stations, and at big-box retailers. But, again, virtually none of that will be available to people who live in an apartment, work in an office tower, and shop in a storefront without a parking lot. I personally see no easy answers for cities like New York where real estate is at a premium, parking almost non-existent and street charging a non-starter.

The most likely scenario, I think, is that big city parking garages and street-level lots will add charging accessible to regular customers. A second source will be coop apartment complexes with some parking. It will remain one of the big challenges of EV adoption, though.

In response to persistent questions (indeed, make that rants) about EVs "just transferring the pollution from the tailpipe to the smokestack" (if EVs charge up from coal plants), Mark Duvall, director of electric transportation at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), said that "less than 50 percent of the grid comes from coal ?€"- we have a diverse electric resource in the U.S. We will get a modest but significant carbon savings with electric transportation."

I asked that same question this week of Derek Kaufman, vice president for business development at Smart. He said that an all-coal scenario would result in EVs being 10 percent better than a gasoline car. If plants are fired by natural gas (an increasingly large number are) then the result is 40 to 50 percent better. Finally, a nuclear grid is 90 to 95 percent better. And, of course, if the electricity is from wind or solar, well, then we're a mammoth 100 percent better.

The grid will keep getting cleaner ?€"- regulations now on the books demand it -?€" so EVs will get steadily cleaner on a "well to wheels" basis. "We really project the grid to get less carbon intense over time," Duvall said.

OK, that's settled, but the question about urban charging remains. The New Urbanism movement says moving into a central city is the greenest choice you can make, but does an EV come with that lifestyle? The utilities should really get to work on that one.

Related:

• Smart Wants to Revive Fortunes With Marketing, but High Gas Prices Would do More

Photo: Flickr/Up Your Ego