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Lot Y Goes Electric

You may have noticed that Lot Y on Chula Vista just south of Broadway has been under construction for a couple of weeks as a company called EVgo installs six charging station spots and an ADA compatible charging spot.  Three parking spaces are being lost to make room for the seven new EV charging spots that will be unavailable to gas-powered vehicles.  That is a net of ten fewer spaces for gas cars.  According to the staff report from December 2017

Parking Lot Y off of Chula Vista Avenue was selected for the following reasons:

– It services the Broadway business district and is located close to a primarily multifamily residential neighborhood.

– It is easily accessible to regional and local EV drivers. – It is currently underutilized.

– It has access to a nearby PG&E power source.

Another driver for locating in Broadway is the relatively high number of EV drivers in the area. The state tracks redeemed EV rebates, which accounts for about 75% of EV owners. In San Mateo County, the 94010 zip code (which includes Burlingame and Hillsborough) received the highest number of rebates at 557. The total rebate count in the County is 5,806, and 125,548 rebates have been issued statewide.

I'm betting that a number of those 557 rebates in B'game and H'borough are for Teslas, but it is not clear that you will be able to charge your Tesla in these spaces since

The charging stations would be universally compatible for fast charging-compatible EVs (including CHAdeMO and CCS standards) and accessible to EVgo subscribers and non-subscribers

But according to this Reuters piece

Besides CCS, there are three other standards that will charge batteries fast: Tesla’s Supercharger system, CHAdeMO, or Charge de Move, developed by Japanese firms including carmakers Nissan and Mitsubishi, and GB/T in China, the world’s biggest electric car market.  “I think over time CHAdeMO and CCS converge, likely into the current CCS standard, and the jury is out as to what will happen to Tesla,” said Pasquale Romano, chief executive officer of Silicon Valley-based ChargePoint, which runs one of the world’s largest charging station networks.

As noted above, one of the goals was to provide charging convenience for people in multi-family homes so perhaps Teslas were not the target market for this "charging plaza".  The good news is that EVgo is paying the city enough in license fees that the lost parking meter revenue should be a wash.  Whether Lot Y remains "under utilized" so that finding a spot when you need it isn't too hard is yet to be seen when there are ten fewer spots to choose from.  And if news reports about the possibility of electric rates going up 50% in NorCal due to PG&E's issues, we might see the EV car market stall.

EV Parking2

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17 responses to “Lot Y Goes Electric”

  1. BMW

    File another one under false sense of accomplishment.
    Cross-ref: greenwashing; virtue signaling that we care about the environment, sustainability and sea-level rise w/o actually doing anything that makes a difference.

  2. hollyroller@gmail.com

    Nobody Cares.
    Nobody Cares.
    Nobody Cares.
    Happy Tax Day.

  3. Christopher Cooke

    Teslas can use CCS with an adapter.ther are quite a few electric and plug in hybrid cars in Burlingame so I expect the stations will be used

  4. resident

    How much is the ticket if I park my gas guzzler in one of those spaces? They are sort of like handicapped cars so I guess it will be expensive.

  5. EV Guy

    Starting this month, Tesla is including a new CCS adapter with all new Model S and Model X orders in Europe so that owners can take advantage of the growing CCS fast-charging networks on the old continent, according to an update on their website.
    Update: Tesla responded to this story saying that the update on their website was inaccurate. It will not be standard and it’s unclear when it will be available as an accessory.
    Tesla has always used its own proprietary charging connector in its vehicles to work with Supercharger network in North America.
    In Europe, the company was using the Type 2 connector, but Tesla confirmed Model 3 is getting a CCS plug instead.
    In December, the automaker started retrofitting European Supercharger stations with “dual charge cables” to support the existing connector and CCS standard.
    This gave an advantage for Model 3 since it would be able to use both Tesla’s Supercharger network, as the company retrofits more stations, and new CCS charging networks, like Ionity and Fastned.
    But at the time, Tesla also reassured Model S and Model X owners that a CCS adapter was coming for their vehicles.
    Now Tesla has updated its charging connector support page in Europe to show that the new CCS adapter is standard on “all custom order Model S and Model X vehicles from February 1.” Update: Tesla now says that it was a mistake on their part and it will not be standard.

  6. VWMan

    Who is paying for the “fossil fuel” generated energy stations? The recent construction had to cost us $250,000 in labor (union) plus the cost of the station adapters and the price of “fossil fuels” energy to power those stations.

  7. Runner

    Where do we find the CO2 levels for Burlingame CA? The increased car traffic and airport can’t be a good thing. Is it me or is the air quality crap compared to the 80’s when I went to school here. I visited the Air Control Board but they do not list 94010 anywhere on the site. Gracias

  8. Joe

    @VWMan, I didn’t add much of the financials from the staff report, but since you asked:
    In April 2012, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) completed a settlement agreement with NRG in resolution of the Enron energy crisis in 2000-2001 to pay for $100 million in EV charging equipment in California. The settlement includes $12.5 million to install at least ten charging plazas to serve the charging needs of multifamily housing residents.
    The EVgo agreement duration is set for 10 years. Due to the project’s capital expenses (infrastructure and installation is estimated at $800,000 to $1 million) the agreement provides early termination protection for EVgo. If the City chooses to terminate the agreement early (for reasons other than cases of emergency or natural disasters), the City will be required to find a new location for the chargers and pay back EVgo’s costs up to $550,000. If the charging plaza is proving to be economically infeasible due to low utilization, or EVgo is doing a poor job operating and maintaining the chargers, the agreement may be terminated early without a pay back. However, EVgo is confident that the Broadway location will experience high utilization, and they have indicated their commitment to responding to maintenance needs within 24-48 hours and completing repairs as soon as possible.
    The agreement provides exclusive rights to EVgo in Lot Y and within 500 feet of Lot Y to provide public fast EV charging stations. The exclusivity rights do not extend to other City parking lots or on-street parking, or to locating private fast chargers (like Tesla chargers) or level 2 chargers in Lot Y or within 500 feet.
    ——————
    Hope that helps.

  9. Zation

    serve the charging needs of multifamily housing residents? wonder what this means? seems as though this lot is for commercial parking rather than multifamily.

  10. Polish

    Charging your car on Broadway? Charging on Burlingame seems much more likely. Isn’t Broadway sort of a dump? I am going to park my pickup in these electric charging stations just to (Editor: expletive deleted) with these numbnuts who stole $250k+ out of our pockets. People who visit Broadway are not going to need to charge their cars because the people who visit this street are locals visiting a bank or Walgreens and maybe a sandwich.
    Another example of social engineering gone bad.

  11. Joe

    From the Chronicle today:
    Partly because of the arrival of the Model 3, electric car sales locally have surged. In 2018, electric cars accounted for 13% of new passenger vehicle registrations in the Bay Area, up from 7% in 2017.
    Clean-car drivers can also get carpool-lane privileges in California. At last count — in 2016 — about 8% of carpool lane occupants on Bay Area highways were low-emissions vehicles, according to a Metropolitan Transportation Commission study. (That’s a lower number than for scofflaws, the study found.)
    In the San Francisco metro area, the number of public charging outlets rose to more than 2,700 by the end of 2018 — up 39% from a year earlier.
    Even in the Bay Area, Lutsey estimates that a little more than 3% of all light-duty vehicles on the roads are electric. Only a few big cities would have a higher proportion.
    https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Driven-by-Tesla-s-Model-3-electric-car-sales-14001829.php?psid=8vEhS
    ————–
    We’ve dedicated quite a bit of Lot Y to a class of vehicle that makes up 3% of the total……..

  12. Joe

    The SM County Civil Grand Jury put out a press release today on adoption of electric vehicles by the County and the cities. The County has swapped 31% of 709 vehicles to electric.
    Burlingame has one EV out of 115 vehicles. Menlo Park is the only city with more than 10 EVs. None of this is necessarily bad as EVs are often not suitable for certain functions nor have they been cheap or easy to recharge during an 8 hour shift.

  13. Nick Borgeous

    Wonder what the average stay on Broadway might be these days. I’d say 30 minutes or less. Not sure these guys did a market study of the need prior to building a product.

  14. Dog Lover

    So far still no cars at this charging area. Hmmmm.

  15. Handle Bard

    You are so right. I park there for a couple of hours at least twice a week and I bike through there at least twice a week. I have seen 2 cars charging since it opened.

  16. BMW

    Typical City strategy – ooh shiny object. EV charging (removes a quarter of the parking in a city lot, the roundabout, limebike. Without thinking about the trade offs.

  17. Cassandra

    Why didn’t Facebook pay for the rec center?

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