FIFE, Wash. – Laura Powers begins every afternoon commute by driving to Tahoma Market in Fife, where she patiently waits 30 minutes for her electric car to charge.
“Saying $600 a month in fuel is worth it,” she said.
But she is frustrated by the fact she must drive north from her job in Tacoma to Fife, even though she actually lives one hour south. She does so because Fife has the only I-5 DC fast-charging station – one that juices up her car
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more FIFE, Wash. – Laura Powers begins every afternoon commute by driving to Tahoma Market in Fife, where she patiently waits 30 minutes for her electric car to charge.
“Saying $600 a month in fuel is worth it,” she said.
But she is frustrated by the fact she must drive north from her job in Tacoma to Fife, even though she actually lives one hour south. She does so because Fife has the only I-5 DC fast-charging station – one that juices up her car in 30 minutes – between downtown Seattle and Tumwater.
“It would be nice if there were more of them,” she said.
More chargers were part of the original plan. Starting in 2009, the U.S. government gave $115 million to a company called ECOtality as part of a public-private partnership to install chargers in select cities across the country, including the Seattle area, between Everett and Olympia. It is called The EV Project.
In 2011, ECOtality announced its goals: 22 fast chargers and 1200 Level 2 chargers, which can charge a car in three to four hours.
But two years later, the company has installed only six fast chargers and 369 Level 2 chargers, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
“The early car sales were not what we had anticipated,” said Amy Hillman, ECOtality’s Northwest sales manager.
Hillman said some chargers originally intended for Seattle were moved to other cities because electric-vehicle sales did not take off right away. The Japanese tsunami hurt production, she added.
It has also been challenging to find
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