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Should taxpayers fund plug-in infrastructure?
AP PHOTO FILE PHOTO
Nissan's new electronic vehicle, the Leaf, is displayed during an opening ceremony of the company's new headquarters in Yokohama, Japan, on Sunday, Aug. 2, 2009.
It might set angry horns honking.
Yet, as the recent "memorandum of understanding" between Nissan and Vancouver illustrates, that's the way of the emerging green-car world.
The deal is simple. If Vancouver and B.C. Hydro set up an adequate network of high-voltage charging stations, Nissan will offer its proposed all-electric Leaf to buyers in the city. The target date is 2011.
No dollars or numbers are included. But the point is made, as crystal clear as a brand new windshield.
Charging stations "need to be in place to ensure a satisfactory customer experience," says Nissan Canada president Mark Grimm. "We'll have to have some ... before we go there."
Vancouver is fine with this. It aims to become the world's greenest city and if it gets the charging stations in place by 2011 it would be the first in Canada to see Leafs on its streets.
It wouldn't lead the world: Nissan has similar deals with 30 other locations, and at every stop, the message is the same. The approach makes sense. Electric cars are a non-starter without places to recharge them, and it's now evident that plugging them into our normal 110-volt sockets won't work.
Reasonable plug-in times for batteries that provide useful range and speed requires 220-volt outlets, similar to those that power our stoves.
Even then, it would still take up to eight hours to fully juice the five-seat Leaf, which is said to travel 160 kilometres between charges in "real world" conditions.
In Vancouver, some 480-volt chargers might be installed at locations like big-box malls or airport parking lots. They would provide an 80 per cent fill-up in 26 minutes.
So it's not just a question of whether there will be enough electricity for the cars: A whole new charging system is needed. And governments are expected to ensure that it's up and running.
Back in the days when the internal combustion engine was becoming the dominant power source for cars, John D. Rockefeller and other oil barons tripped over each other to make sure gasoline filling stations became as common as dandelions.
True, taxpayers subsidized them through lax regulation of their oil drilling and refining operations, tax breaks, sweetheart land deals, support for strikebreaking and outright scams.
But it was a private-sector enterprise. No government had to mandate anything and politicians' main role was to rein in the industry's worst excesses.
Now, Vancouver City Council has approved regulations requiring standard-voltage charging stations in the parking garages of new condo and apartment buildings. City officials estimate this would add $1,500, or 5 per cent, to the cost of each parking stall.
The city will also wire public parking spots, in lots and along streets. It will apply for a federal subsidy to pay for part of this.
But the city is moving cautiously, requiring charging stations in only a small percentage of parking spots, even though the cost of outfitting them all, at least in a new building, isn't much greater.
Vancouver gets no car production or assembly jobs out of this. Nissan will build Leafs for North America at its plant in Smyrna, Tenn., the result, in part, of a low-cost $1.6 billion (U.S.) federal loan.
Trying to replace a mature industry is clearly an expensive proposition, and the industries involved expect a lot of help.
What we need to ponder is how much, and in what form, all of us should pay for a technology that, according to all projections, will be available to only a handful.
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