San Diego Goes Electric With New Green Vehicles

San Diego is doing the environment proud—the city is soon to be one of the early adopters of hybrid electric vehicles, making room for new models of both plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and all-electric vehicles or battery electric vehicles (BEVs) to be sold in the area market. The city is part of the EV movement, which is releasing about 8,300 electric vehicles and 15,000 charging stations across the country.

In order to prepare for these green vehicles, the city is installing about 1,500 home and commercial charging stations across the county over the course of the next three years, a number that is proportional to the amount of vehicles being released for sale. The company leading this movement, ECOtotality, is being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy with a $114 million grant. Andrew Hoskinson, the company’s San Diego area manager, told the San Diego News Room that San Diego was chosen as one of 16 markets to install electric vehicles in: “San Diego is one of the metropolitan markets we’re installing electric vehicle chargers [in]. That’s a couple primary reasons that we’re here in San Diego. Our project partners, which include Nissan, SANDAG and SDG&E amongst many others, were very supportive. The organizations are essentially creating the environment to make San Diego easy and ready,” he said.

Two of the vehicles set to debut in the upcoming year are the plug-in Chevy Volt and the all-electric Nissan LEAF, both of which cost upwards of $30,000. About 1,000 Nissan LEAF vehicles will be deployed in the San Diego market this year. However, a more cost effective option is also available: according to San Diego News Room, a plug-in conversion option is also available, which allows certain cars to shift into a plug-in or all electric mode—and it only costs from about $5,000-$13,000 dollars.

Photo from cliff1066 via flickr