This week’s Covid-19 Taskforce micro webinar is on EV Charging with Suzanne Goldberg, Director of Policy at Chargepoint and hosted by movmi’s Venkatesh Gopal. ChargePoint has been committed to making it easy for drivers and businesses to go electric since 2007, with the largest electric vehicle (EV) charging network and most complete set of charging solutions available today. In this webinar they discuss how Covid-19 has cleared the way further for the electric mobility revolution, the investments local municipalities have made in supporting EV adoption and what policies and incentives cities can create to ensure access to electric vehicles is equitable across the board.
You can also directly ask the taskforce anything related to Covid-19 and seek advice on managing your own operation by sending an email to taskforce@movmi.net.
Covid-19 Taskforce: Covid-19 Task force: EV Charging with Venkatesh Gopal and Suzanne Goldberg
In this MICRO WEBINAR:
- Although Covid-19 has been a major crisis especially for the mobility world, the improvement in urban air quality globally has been a favorable outcome. Cities are making efforts to sustain these levels, one of which is supporting EV adoption.
- What motivates people to make a change? Seeing dramatic changes has had a big and tangible impact which has helped increase support for actions at a local level for municipalities.
- Pre-Covid, we saw a new municipality declaring a climate change emergency almost every week. What we are seeing now is that local governments are staying the course with their climate commitments, but not prioritizing climate change. Instead they are re-evaluating their planning and timeline for rolling out their climate change policies.
- What cities can do to help EV infrastructure? How about innovative financing mechanisms? Supporting EV adoption infrastructure that will help both carshare (fleet) providers and the local community gain access on an equitable level.
- There have been major investments specifically into electric mobility across municipalities across Canada, including Vancouver, Halifax, Kingston, Oakville and more. We see steps being taken not only targeted towards developing public infrastructure, but also in approving policies favoring multi unit residential buildings (MURBs) residents to gain access to vehicle charging in their parking lots.
- Chargepoint designs and develops charging solutions of every form of electric mobility which help them understand the needs of the drivers, case in point ride-hailing business (Lyft/Uber). In this business it’s about municipalities incentivizing the (ride-hailing) business to adopt EVs in their fleet although the fleet isn’t owned by the operators. Ensuring there is effective infrastructure at convenient areas, is key to growing EV adoption, especially for those who drive passenger vehicles.
- The City of Vancouver incentivizes this through the licensing fees per ride-hail vehicle. The $150 fee drops down to $30 for drivers with EVs. These types of incentives happen best at the municipality level.
- Fuelling an EV is fundamentally different from fuelling an ICE vehicle. Charging infrastructure providers who are leading the space plan for a mixture of charging infrastructure including DC chargers. What’s most convenient about EVs is that the vehicles are ‘fuelling’ while parked mainly overnight. Therefore, although fast and highway chargers are gaining popularity, they aren’t as necessary or critical for a successful EV adoption or experience.
- Has the pandemic caused any dents in EV adoption plans? Best practice policies for EV charging infrastructure post pandemic haven’t changed much as there is still a need and in fact a harder push for cleaner transportation. These efforts will play a critical part in the overall mobility recovery and will form a base in improving our economy.
- Let’s look at ways to make it easier, cheaper and less complex to implement EV charging infrastructure. Let’s create policies and rates incentives that make EV mobility and charging more attractive to both investors and potential adopters.
If you have a direct question for the taskforce related to Covid-19 or wish to seek advice on managing your own operation, send an email with your question to taskforce@movmi.net. For more Covid-19 information and resources click here.
