Danny Beal | GNP contributor
Do not plan on seeing any electric buses with “ECU” emblazoned on the side anytime soon. But in time you will.
“We are certainly interested in battery tech for our transit vehicles,” says Wood Davidson, head of ECU Transit.
Interested enough to buy two electric-powered buses for more than $1 million each. The problem is the infrastructure, as in the lack of it.
It doesn’t stop there. With buses, and with cars, SUVs and trucks, there is ”range anxiety [and] environmental concerns” along with “not many people having operated electric vehicles,” says Chad Carwein, the sustainability manager at ECU.
The Greenville News Project spent this fall looking into the electric vehicle infrastructure in Pitt County. It found that building the infrastructure will be expensive, and local leaders say money going into vehicle manufacturing and charging station production, plus lack of interest from the public are major issues.
Paying the piper
ECU Transit has two EV buses on order, and that is a bill of at least $2 million. But Transit is self-funding by state law. It had a $1.6 million fund balance as of March, Board of Trustee documents show, and even if it wanted to spend it all on the EV buses, it would come up short.
So, it has turned to a grant from the North Carolina Volkswagen Settlement Program, Davidson says.
The money is from the state’s share of a years-old settlement the automaker made with the federal government for putting devices in its vehicles that cheated U.S. emissions tests. North Carolina is using the money to provide grants to replace diesel vehicles and implement new charging stations for electric vehicles.
Besides the electric buses, ECU is considering using settlement grant money to buy a couple of other buses, Davidson says. New diesel buses are priced at about $60,000, and natural gas buses at $100,000.
“Our proposal going forward is to have a mix of fuel styles when we get these buses in because it’s more sustainable if a natural disaster were to strike and take out electricity affecting our charging stations,” he says. “There are more options, and the smart choice for us is to have a mix.”
Few charging stations
Now that ECU Transit has the buses covered, there is the matter of charging stations.
“We will need big, high-power charging stations to charge our buses, and they will be put in the transit garage. These batteries will have ranges of 250 miles, or so, on them,” Davidson says.
While ECU has a variety of 50 buses, pickup trucks and vans, it is still looking to add new electric vehicles to its fleet. There currently are six charging stations on ECU’s downtown campus for any driver with a parking pass to use. But their use is “hit and miss,” Davidson says.
There are 37 more EV charging stations around Pitt County, according to PlugShare. Most charge from 49 to 66 cents per kilowatt hour, which makes for a charge-up bill of roughly $25 for the average electric vehicle.
These stations are at parking decks, car dealerships and gas stations. Greenville Utilities has a few at the ECU Health Medical Center, but it did not respond to GNP’s questions about those chargers or home chargers.
According to Motor Trend, Americans who want a home charging station will spend around $1,150 to $2,750 to purchase and install it.
There are other reasons why consumers may stay away from buying EVs, says the website Plug’n Drive. Waiting for models with longer ranges or higher passenger capacities, is one reason. The lack of charging stations in the surrounding areas and misinformation on social media are others.
Plug’n Drive says the electric vehicle industry will get the “support they deserve,” adding that the support will come in several ways. Government incentives will help, as will manufacturers evening out the distribution on their lots. So will pushing for government support to roll out more charging stations around the country.
Why not electric vehicles?
It is the lack of infrastructure that it foremost in consumers’ minds. “I want more charging stations and for battery prices to drop before investing in today’s electric vehicles,” said ECU communication professor Nikki Nichols. She would not think of buying an EV until that happens.
Range anxiety—the fear of not finding a charging station before the car’s battery dies-is on Zoe Brannon’s mind too. There is a “lack of electric vehicle charging stations near my area,” the college student says.
“Typically, you have to go to more suburban places to access these things, and that can be a hindrance versus gas stations, which are on almost every corner,” she says.
That is no surprise to ChargePoint, a top electric vehicle charger networking company in the US.
“Until the larger cities around the country, such as Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Boston, and Chicago start pushing for their areas to be electric vehicle friendly, it will never get to your neck of the woods,” a ChargePoint representative said.
“It must start from the top before it can trickle down to the Raleigh’s and Charlotte’s of the world, eventually getting to the Greenville’s of the world.”
Beal produced this story for the Fall 2023 course, In-depth Reporting.
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