Electric vehicles are coming – again – but this time it’s different.

 

New lithium ion battery technology and buy-in from every major OEM is creating a significant EV market.  As reported by the Plug-In Vehicle Tracker, the major OEMs (and several new startups) are already manufacturing fully electric vehicles, and some will be rolling on U.S. soil as soon as this summer (like Nissan’s Leaf).

 

However, unless there are convenient, easily available options to charge these vehicles, EVs will come and go just as quickly as they did in the early 90s.

 

Enter Project Get Ready, or “PGR.”

 

PGR is an initiative run by Rocky Mountain Institute, an entrepreneurial non-profit in Colorado that specializes in energy efficiency and renewables research and consulting. PGR was a result of RMI’s Smart Garage summit that brought vehicle stakeholders and experts together to figure out how to electrify the U.S. vehicle fleet.

 

One of the great realizations of the summit was that municipalities hold the key to vehicle electrification because they can bring together businesses, utilities, and consumers to implement EV initiatives. PGR was created to help North American cities build local environments suitable for and welcoming to EVs.

 

The most important piece of the new EV environment is charging infrastructure, or electric vehicle supply equipment. EVs have a finite range and without plentiful charging stations, they are doomed to rejection by public and private fleets.

 

PGR is aiding cities to build out EV charging infrastructure in their regions, and to address and work to overcome several other issues with EV adoption, such as vehicle procurement, EV signage, EVSE permitting, and consumer education. PGR recommends that cities take the following initial steps to start an initiative in their area:

 

 

Upon completion of these tasks, the city signs a Memorandum of Understanding with RMI and joins PGR as an official city.

 

Currently PGR has eight official partner regions, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Orlando, Portland, Raleigh, the state of Rhode Island and Toronto, with several more in the works. These cities all have unique working groups that are bringing diverse stakeholders together to prepare for EVs in their area. For example, the non-profit Toronto Atmospheric Fund runs Toronto’s initiative, EV300, while the champion of Houston’s initiative is the city’s assistant director of finance.

 

In addition to the partner cities, PGR also has many partner technical advisers, such as Ford, Nissan, Coulomb, Underwriters Laboratory, Portland General Electric, and so on, who assist the cities in their initiatives. PGR holds monthly meetings that bring all the cities and tech advisers together to discuss EV-related topics and help to answer the cities questions about initiative implementation. PGR is really about convening – by bringing the cities and technical advisers together, best practices are discovered and shared among all the cities and mistakes are not repeated.

 

Finally, PGR hosts the Project Get Ready Web site which is a clearinghouse of EV initiative information. The site not only contains great external resources, such as BC Hydro’s EV infrastructure guidelines, but also original RMI research, such as the Stakeholder Investment Guide for Public Electric-Vehicle Charging Infrastructure and the consumer-focused Total Cost of Ownership calculator. The site also hosts a database and “menu” of actions that cities need to implement in order to achieve a region most suitable for EVs. In fact, the partner cities are rated on their implementation of these actions and tracked so PGR can identify implementation gaps and best practices.

 

Ultimately, the success of EV adoption needs to start at the local level. Cities (and in some case whole states) have a unique ability to bring together the right stakeholders and develop the best incentives. As technology improves and these local hotspots of EV activity grow, we will see entire EV corridors (as is already starting to happen in Oregon and Washington) develop.

 

Ideally, in a few years’ time, someone from Seattle should be able to drive his or her 100-mile-range Nissan Leaf all the way to San Diego without ever using an ounce of petroleum!