San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, the soon to be next Lieutenant Governor of California joined the Port of San Francisco, Coulomb Technologies and MasterCard PayPass to begin installation of the first new electric plug-in vehicles (EV) charging stations in San Francisco. A $15 million grant funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the Transportation Electrification Initiative administered by the Department of Energy made the project possible. The two EV charging stations are part of the ChargePoint America program that will allow EV drivers in the Bay Area to pay for parking and charging their electric cars quickly and conveniently.
Last month, San Francisco took major steps toward making the San Francisco Bay Area a national demonstration project of the promise and potential of electric vehicles, with the award of $14 million in Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) grants to support four innovative electric vehicle (EV) projects across the nine county region. The funds will leverage additional funds exceeding $30 million to put EVs in government fleets, taxis, and car-share programs, as well as develop a network of charging stations available to the public throughout the region. LA Metro has also recently announced an electric vehicle pilot program.
In addition to supporting the build-out of public EV charging infrastructure throughout the Bay Area, the projects funded by this grant money will include purchasing approximately 90 plug-in vehicles and installing charging equipment to support them in municipal fleets, a car sharing electrification program and a pilot project for EV taxi cabs. This innovative taxi program will launch a fleet of taxis with rechargeable batteries for local neighborhood trips in San Francisco, and will also create the nation’s first battery-switch demonstration for a fleet of cabs built with switchable battery packs and served by battery-switch stations in San Francisco and San Jose.