America’s small towns need to take actions that can give hope to their local retailers for their future survival. A town can offer incentives to people to come into the town and shop there. One positive and inexpensive action a town could take would be to set up charging stations for hybrid electric vehicles.
Hybrid vehicles are automobiles that use a combination of gasoline and electricity to power them. Electric vehicles require different amounts of voltage, depending on the make and model.
Both hybrid and electric cars lower mileage costs, because the electric charges they need cost less than gasoline, which is more expensive to use, and likely to become even more expensive in the future. Right now, it is estimated that plug-in electric vehicles can be driven for about one-third of the cost of a gasoline-fueled automobile.
There are about 2 million hybrid and electric vehicles registered in the United States now, according to the Electric Drive Transportation Association, which claims that, “Over the next two to three years, all major automakers ”“ and some start-ups ”“ intend to put” plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on the road.
Everyone knows change is inevitable, but the change to electric cars is slow in coming. The cost of hybrid cars still hampers sales. Even more, for electric vehicles, there is fear among potential buyers about where they will be able to get charges for their cars, on the road.
Electric vehicle charging stations can play a vital role in reducing that concern. Both hybrid and electric cars passing through our local towns need electric fuel recharging stations. If several of our towns were to invest in putting up charging stations, which are low cost, the results could be very beneficial to our local economy. Visitors driving electric or hybrid automobiles could stop in the town’s downtown district or at one of the big mall locations to eat at a local restaurant and then do retail shopping while their car gets a two-hour recharge, before they continue traveling elsewhere.
Electric charging stations can be installed anywhere near electric outlets at gas stations, auto supply shops, shopping malls, downtown retail districts, hotels or even on a municipal parking lot. All that is needed is space for one car to be parked for service at the electric vehicle charging station, using a dedicated special circuit, with its own circuit breaker. That sounds technically complicated, but it is not.
Let’s look at the investment of putting in a local, small-town, electric charging station. Electricity costs run about 35 cents per kilowatt hour, in most areas of our country. In two hours of maximum electric charging of a mid-size car (using a midrange class 2 plug-in charging station), the estimated basic equipment costs would be about $6,000, with electrical upgrades and installation by a licensed electrician around $3,000 more.
The charging station could take up one parking space, preferably with room for another unit, as business increases in the future. The charging stations could bring in more business from local residents, as well as out-of-town visitors to the retail stores in shopping malls or in downtown areas stores. Maybe it could even encourage an investment by mall vendors to absorb the equipment and electric installation start-up costs.
Town officials, or local downtown economic development agencies, or even individual investors, might want to cover the expenses for an initial charging station. Investors and the town itself can get income returns from the charging station, by installing a meter to track charging times. Many people believe a $1 per hour charge for this two-hour service would seem acceptable to potential electric charging station users. The savings on fuel costs are tremendous and the incentive to use a local electric charging station opens the door for more jobs, better retail business growth and more tax revenues for the town in the future.
Our town representatives should consider funds for building some charging stations to help local businesses, while indirectly benefiting from the added revenue from this service. It is a good idea to think out of the box and do something about it that prepares for that future growth and its contributing benefits for fuel savings that indirectly help local businesses, too.
This is already being done by some towns and cities in other parts of the country. Doing it here could put our towns on the southern Maine coast on a much bigger map.
— Bernard Featherman is a business columnist for the Journal Tribune and former president of the Biddeford-Saco Chamber of Commerce.
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