More on Charging Stations

The blog post below got picked up on our Facebook Page and garnered a great series of comments — The post was bout Costco removing charging stations that had been in since the old electric Cars GM destroyed a decade ago. I ‘ll post them here:

• You mean bite us in the a** JVH?:-) So Costco is supposed to keep those charging stations open because Ed Bagley Jr says so? I didn’t even know Costco has those stations. But I do like their hot dogs and their pizza is pretty awesome also.
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  Wanda Krol Did they remove them in other states besides these mentioned also? 

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  Bank-of America-Parking I wonder if all of these chargers were equipped with the J-1772 plug? Not a smart move on their part if they were because this EV cars thing is here to stay. I have 4 chargers in my garage and they are being utilized 90% of the time. 

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  Catherine Florence Bank of America: in your private home garage? 90% of the time? What cars use those? 

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  Bank-of America-Parking ‎@ Catherine. Nope at work. I manage the parking garage for the BofA Plaza in Downtown LA. I have 7 leafs, and 3 volts in the garage. Though not all of them use my chargers on a daily basis. You can see pictures of the stations on my page. 

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  Catherine Florence ‎@ Bank of America: Thank You. Curious BofA Sir: what is the demographic and income bracket of the drivers of these cars? I fathom they are higher end executives. Also, how much does it cost to charge these cars? Would it be possible Sir BofA to post these pics here on Parking Today’s FB page? Thank You. 

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  Barbara Wells Lo and behold, I must be in dark ages. I still haven’t seen one single Leaf nor a volt. 

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  Bank-of America-Parking ‎@ Catherine. Great questions. The garage caters mostly to law firms and financial companies. However, I do not think any of the owners are higher end executives as they do not purchase reserved spaces from me; they are just concerned parkers that want to make a difference. Not to mention they (leaf owners) get the single rider car-pool sticker. Now, that is worth the price. Besides, here in CA there were several incentives in addition to the Federal one. i.e. One that qualified could get up to (potentially) $19k in savings from tax credits and other private incentives. 

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  Bank-of America-Parking continued: There is no charge for using our EV charging stations and/or amenity bay. This is one of the other amenities to our Tenants and/or patrons. 

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  Jeff Jones ‎@ BofA: What is your monthly costs for the charges, between maintain, electric and loss of space since these are like reserved spaces as they are only available to the Electric cars, correct? Also was your install part of the EV Project and if so have they been turned over to you yet or is that still to come? 

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  Bank-of America-Parking ‎@ Jeff: No loss in monthly parking revenue, we actually gained these spaces by removing old parking islands on an exit no longer used since 9/11. We choose this location because it would be easier to monitor since my office is on this level as well. As far as maintenance and/operating costs, ownership has not provided me with any of the maintenance costs yet, but the Parking department I manage is in charge of monitoring the actual chargers and area. 
• Parking Today Impressive. But I go back to my original take on all this, and my blog  today. You have seven people who want to make a difference. But thinking about it, would a carpool program that took three cars off the road for every four person carpool actually do a better job in making a difference. I know the owners of the Leafs and Volts feel good about it, but in actuality, wouldn’t removing 75% of the cars do a much better job — of course your revenue in the garage might go down. Do you offer free parking to the EVs?  JVH