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Politics & Government

City Hopes to Plug In to Electric Car Program

Beverly Hills has applied to participate in a federally funded program to assess the infrastructure needs for electric vehicles.

Beverly Hills has applied to participate in a federally funded program that will assess nationwide infrastructure needs for electric vehicles, officials said at Thursday's City Council meeting.

The program, known as ChargePoint America, is a partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy and Coulomb Technologies, a charging station manufacturer based in Northern California. The initiative divides $37 million among 15 cities that will install Coulomb chargers at parking facilities and other public places.

ChargePoint's intention is "to gather information on the type of usage that [participants] see in metropolitan areas and specifically in parking facilities and vehicles," Chad Lynn, the city's director of parking, told council members.

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The grant includes charging station machines and operational costs for up to two years. When the program terminates, the city keeps the charging station equipment, which can then be set for either free usage or fee-based vehicle charging.

"We applied for 28 charging stations in 12 locations in units of two or four," said Lynn, who directed residents to suggest specific Beverly Hills locations via the ChargePoint website as the application process continues through the rest of this year.

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"The not-so-good news: The grant doesn't include the cost of installation or the incremental power increase," Lynn said. "Our infrastructure needs to be upgraded to support this—in all but one of the facilities we do not have enough room on our electrical panels to install new equipment."

ChargePoint inspectors visited Beverly Hills on Tuesday and "really liked the diversity of our facilities ... [because] you have multiple uses in one facility and it's a great way to determine what types of uses you may see," Lynn said. "It's a great place to gather information."  

To mitigate the installation costs the city is collaborating with Southern California Edison and Energy Innovations Group, a Beverly Hills electrical contractor, to secure additional grant money from other sources of green-energy funding.

In response to a question from Councilwoman Lili Bosse about the installation bill, Lynn guessed that $10,000 to $15,000 per facility would cover the infrastructure upgrade.

Councilman Julian Gold asked whether connections between a vehicle and charger were standard, to which Lynn replied that they were for the most part.

"There is a standard plug that fits all electric vehicles that are being manufactured today ... [but] it won't be backwards-compatible to older vehicles that are currently out there," Lynn said. "The [electric cars] being produced today like the Leaf and the Volt are compatible."

Gold also inquired as to the average cost of charging an electric vehicle.

Lynn didn't have a solid figure in advance of the city's comprehensive proposal, which is still in the works, but he said the going rate for fee-based charging stations is $2 to $3. "So it would be less than that," Lynn said.

Vice Mayor William Brien added that the electrical "cost-per-gallon equivalent is about 75 cents ... versus now what is about $4.50 a gallon."

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