At this meeting Russell Sydney co-founder of www.sustainableclub.org gave a presentation on his club's effort at promoting alternatives to gasoline based transportation. I only took one picture inside the meeting (of the Sustainable Club flier) but outside I discovered SCAQMD's phenomenal Photovoltaic Solar Chargeport. This PV Solar Chargeport was installed a whopping 16 YEARS AGO!!! in the year 1992 (no wonder I can't find any online specifications/descriptions of this installation being commissioned pre-commercial Internet which happened around 1994-1995). The Solar Chargeport supports simultaneous charging of 19 Plug-In Battery Electric and Hybrid Vehicles via every type of charging station. Most of the parking stalls are outfitted with fantastically generic Pacific Utility Products URVP-52-PM NEMA-3R EV charge pedestals that have both a NEMA 5-20R outlet for 20amp 120VAC charging and a wonderful NEMA 14-50R 50amp 240VAC outlet for more serious EV charging. Also available in a couple of the parking stalls are Small Paddle Inductive (SPI) TAL MagneCharge chargers usable with the remaining fleet of Toyota RAV4EVs that were saved from the crusher. When awesome GM EV1s roamed the California roads between 1996 and 2005 they too could utilize SPI TAL MagneCharge chargers until they were collected by GM and crushed. A couple of AVCON conductive chargers are in place which was the standard used by the Honda EV Plus.

The 18 parking stalls are shaded by an overhead ~30kW photovolatic solar array utilizing Solarax modules (bought out by BP Solar) which directly converts sunlight into usable electricity via grid tied inverters that can charge any plug-in EVs or PHEVs that utilitze these stalls. When the stalls are empty the excess PV generated energy powers SCAQMD's building insuring 100% utilitzation at all times of the photovoltaic solar array. When I complete my EV (conversion) I will be able to drive to and from SCAQMD without any charging ("fueling") costs. At home I can charge from my 4kW SunPower PV solar system and SCAQMD's Solar Chargeport is free to plug in! Until that time a roundtrip of about 160mi costs anywhere from $18-32 in gasoline at $4 per gallon gasoline depending on if a 35mpg or 20mpg vehicle is used. Imagine if one were to drive a 12mpg SUV the cost to drive 160 miles on $4 per gallon gasoline would be $53. Instead, think outside of the status quo box and imagine driving a plug-in battery EV where you can charge for free on both ends of your trip. Even if you had to pay for electricity it would be equivalent to filling up on $0.70 per gallon gasoline. EVs are hugely more efficient than their gasoline ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) counterparts. The cost to drive 160 miles would be roughly $4-5 in electricity depending on if you have a 200whr/mi EV or a 250whr/mi EV.

Sadly, as you can surmise, in 2008 the stalls are pretty much empty all the time due to lack of widely available OEM plug-in EVs given that CARB rescinded its 1990's ZEV mandate to require 10% of all new automobiles sold in California by 2003 to be Zero Emission Vehicles. The majority of the 6000+ EVs that did exist at the height of the ZEV program have been collected by their respective manufacturers and destroyed. Less than 1000 of those original EVs still exist on the roads today. None of the GM EV1s survived the crusher and the handful (40) donated to universities and museums had their electric drive systems permanently disabled so they would never be driven on public roads again. Ford removed all the Think City EVs they had deployed. Honda collected the approximately 400 EV Pluses they had leased and shredded them. Toyota began their own process of collecting and eliminating from existence the RAV4EVs but a dedicated group of lessees were able to convince Toyota to save the RAV4EVs and allow them to purchase the vehicles once their leases expired. About 400 Toyota RAV4EVs continue to exist today in the hands of their passionate and enthusiastic EV driving owners.

If you would like to learn more about how Plug In vehicles can help wean the USA from its insatiable oil appetite, insure energy independence, and improve our national security, not to mention drastically reducing vehicular related global warming and pollution, visit Plug In America.