By Mark Bashore, WKAR News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkar/local-wkar-980110.mp3
Lansing, MI –
The number of electric vehicles on Michigan roads is inching higher. In addition to the Toyota Prius hybrid, today you might see a Chevrolet Volt or even a Nissan Leaf in traffic. Meanwhile, the Lansing Board of Water and Light has launched a project to help figure out where to put the charging stations these cars will need. As WKAR's Mark Bashore reports, still low numbers of Chevy Volts means it will be next year before the initiative is completely up to speed.
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The BWL has spent most of a three-quarter million dollar federal earmark to incentivize electric vehicle buyers with rebates and high-speed charging stations. That's so the utility can track their battery usage and plan for public electric charging stations.
"And we can see how often people are charging, what time of day, what the frequency is " says BWL project coordinator Angie Goodman.
The idea is to gauge the impact on the utility's grid and decide where future public charging stations ought to go. She says the utility has lined up their 25 participants, but right now only six of them are providing data. That's because it's taking a while to get their Volts from General Motors.
"I've had to call the dealerships around the area, try to locate Chevy Volts, get people on a list," Goodman says. "Every dealership right now seems to have a waiting list."
Goodman says Lansing participants have purchased Volts as far away as Owosso. General Motors says it was all part of the plan.
"We were very forthright in suggesting we were going to limit our model year and calendar year '11 production," says GM's Kristin Zimmerman. She works on infrastructure for the Chevy Volt. "And that was to 10,000 units because we wanted to learn as much as we possibly could from model year '11 and get as much of that into model year '12."
Which means fewer vehicles. Zimmerman says Volt production in Hamtramck will jump to a 60,000 per year clip--that's a six-fold increase--but not until early 2012. The fleet of BWL participants will slowly climb to about 13 by the end of next month, but the other dozen will wait longer. All 25 won't have their cars until next spring or possibly summer.
East Lansing's Pat Poli is one of the new Volt owners already being tracked. I joined her inside her garage next to her new red Volt connected to an even newer high-speed charging station.
"I may or may not be a typical customer in terms of how the Volt is used, or I might be a perfectly typical customer and I think the more people that participate and share their data, the more information they're going learn about, you know, where these charging stations should be deployed, how the vehicle's used, you know, do people want to charge during the day regardless of the price premium that they pay?" says Poli.
Poli tends to recharge her Volt overnight to take advantage of a lower rate. The purchase has triggered a friendly competition with her 18-year old daughter.
"She drove it about 60 miles and she came back and put the key fob on the table and said she got 47.3 miles to the charge," says Poli. "So she's competing with herself and with me a little bit to see who can wring the most miles out of a charge, so it's kind of fun."
The Board of Water and Light will track the local Volt owners for three years. It will share the charging data with the U.S. Department of Energy, which is prepared to award millions more dollars to communities preparing to plug-in. By encouraging electric vehicle use, the federal government is aiming to cut U.S. oil imports by one-third by 2025.