Northern California has turned into a critical hub in America’s developing electric vehicle market. As San Francisco has pushed for greener transportation, we have seen neighboring cities like San Jose and Pleasant Hill join the club. These communities have installed Coulomb ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations to accommodate EVs used by city workers and residents. The latest addition to Northern California’s EV network is the city of Martinez, California.
Martinez has received funding from the Contra Costa Transportation Authority for three 120V EV charging stations. This funding was made possible by a half-cent sales tax applied to residents of Contra Costa County. Martinez officials have worked with TRANSPAC, a group of elected officials and administrators in the county, to implement EV charging stations at strategic locations. Residents of Martinez will find the Coulomb charging stations located on Main Street, at City Hall and within a block of the Amtrak station. In addition to the city’s fleet of four EVs, residents of Martinez will be able to charge their EVs within minutes of downtown attractions.
As always, TRANSPAC and the city of Martinez needed to find a way to ensure that consumers paid for EV charging. The Coulomb ChargePoint network allows multiple payment methods at the point of purchase. Visitors to Martinez can call the phone number located on an EV charging station to receive an access code for one-time charging. Residents can open ChargePoint Network plans to pay monthly bills instead of using credit cards for each purchase. These stations could evolve to handle credit and debit card purchases at a remote payment station as volume increases.
TRANSPAC members have embraced Coulomb charging stations in the past year in an effort to encourage EV use. We should expect Martinez neighbors like Concord and Clayton to make their first purchases in upcoming months as more funds become available. These infrastructure developments need to be expedited in the next five years to account for plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles set to hit the market. Automakers may need to speed up development of EVs like the Nissan LEAF but there needs to be a similar effort by municipalities to develop public charging systems. We need to see regional planning agencies similar to TRANSPAC allocate funds for EV charging stations throughout the United States. Without these efforts, the Nissan LEAF and its EV brethren may remain in the margins of the automobile industry.
