Maryland officials are banking $500,000 on the hopes that electric cars — which are months from hitting the market– go mainstream by the time they finish installing dozens of car-charging stations along Interstate 95 next year.
Maryland’s Energy Administration is directing roughly $340,000 in stimulus money to a Baltimore company to build 55 electric car-charging stations along the I-95 corridor — placing at least five stations in eight counties and Baltimore City.
The energy agency awarded another $135,000 to Baltimore City for a dozen more charging stations in parking garages across the city.
Auto industry analyst Ed Kim said it may be another two to five years before “mainstream” consumers begin buying electric vehicles.
“The infrastructure isn’t critical,” said Kim, director of Industry Analysis for AutoPacific, a California auto research firm. “When electric cars come out by the end of this year, the early consumers are going to be really excited about the technology and what the cars stand for — they aren’t going to care about the infrastructure. The infrastructure is for the mainstream consumer, who won’t come along for a couple years.”
But an existing infrastructure is key to jump-starting the trend toward electric cars, Kim said.
“It’s going to be a chicken or egg scenario where mainstream consumers won’t bite if there’s not a lot of infrastructure, but it will be difficult to justify building infrastructure before there are mainstream buyers,” he said.
Each station will contain one plug and cost $4,000 to install, said Jill Sorensen, the executive director of the Baltimore Electric Vehicle Initiative, the company leading the project. Electric cars will need to be plugged in for roughly six to 10 hours to be fully charged.
The lengthy charging times make neighborhood charging centers more practical than placing stations along a highway, said Bruce Harrison, director of consulting for IHS Automotive, a global industry research firm.
“Imagine yourself sitting at the edge of I-95 for eight hours,” he said, “and you can understand what kind of challenge there might be there.”
The Baltimore Electric Vehicle Initiative has not released specifics on the locations of the charging stations.
