San Diego County officials cut the ribbon Monday on several new charging stations located in their underground parking garage below the new waterfront park. To celebrate, San Diego's 12,000 electric vehicle owners can plug in and charge for free this week.
"When we went from the horse to the car, one of the things was how are these cars going to run, if we don't have gas stations everywhere," said County Supervisor Dave Roberts. "And it was a transformational thing. Here in California, our goal is we want to have at least 1 million of these chargers around for a projection of 1.5 million cars.”
The county won a $500 million grant from the California Energy Commission to help curb greenhouse gas emissions. The money is being used to fund the new stations, which were installed by ChargePoint, one of the world's largest charging networks. ChargePoint will operate the stations for five years, with plans to expand into 10 other county parking facilities by the end of 2015.
"So the more infrastructure, the more confident you are to go and find charging stations where you work, shop and at home to really make the entire experience an easy and seamless transition for fueling,” said Michael Jones, the San Diego director of ChargePoint.
