Pitch
Allow residents without driveways to charge electrical vehicles on their streets
Description
Summary
It gives me great pleasure to fantasize about selling my 13 year old sedan for an electric vehicle.
Alas, I, like many other Somerville residents, do not have a driveway. In order to charge my new Tesla, e-Golf or electric Smart Car, I would need to run an extension cord from my house to the street. However, to further complicate the scenario, that approach would only work if I could secure that same parking spot every day. If you are a fellow Somervillian reading this, you can chuckle with recognition, knowing how impossible that is.
These factors make the prospect of owning an electric car in Somerville very undesirable.
What if the City could implement an easy way for residents to charge their electric cars from the street?
Combine this with a mobilization campaign and tax break or other incentive to buy electric vehicles, and it would be revolutionary. I'd do it.
Unfortunately, I don't have much other data about possible technologies that could do this, or about how much it would cost or how many carbon emissions it would save.
I'm allowing that this proposal can be edited by anyone so they can add ideas, facts and figures.
What actions do you propose?
- Research ways for this opportunity to be seized. Perhaps some bright students at Tufts or MIT would have some ideas. Is this being done at any other cities? What policy-technology pairings have been created? Could solar play into the mix?
Who will take these actions?
A research team, to start out with. Looking for ideas from other people on the Climate CoLab.
What are the key challenges?
If the incentive was large enough, we could convert perhaps as much as 20% of the residential fleet to electric. Though this is unsubstantiated.
What are the key benefits?
What are the proposal’s costs?
Time line
This would take several years, but significant headway could be caused by 2020.
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