State Unveils Plan to Help Drivers Recharge Their Electric Vehicles

In an effort to double the number of electric vehicles on California’s roads, the California Energy Commission rolled out an incentive plan to help drivers pay for the equipment to recharge the high-tech cars.

The electric vehicle market still is in the training-wheels stage, with only about 1,000-plus electric vehicles registered in the state. To overcome lingering fears that the cars cost too much and have a limited driving range, the new incentive plan will give new electric vehicle owners up to $1,250 each for the purchase and installation of charging equipment, which can cost as much as $3,000 a unit.

Also kicking funds into the program will be auto makers--General Motors Corp., American Honda, Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Sales--as well as the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

The commission and the state’s air districts already provide a $5,000-per-vehicle financial incentive to help with lease costs of electric vehicles. A 10% federal tax credit also is available.

“By expanding the EV fueling infrastructure, we hope to further heighten public interest in these zero-emission vehicles,” said Jananne Sharpless, chairwoman of the commission’s transportation committee.

Commission research has found that the cost of installing charging equipment was one of the big obstacles to EV purchases, said Sue Kateley, manager of EV programs at the San Francisco-based energy commission.

“There were people who were dying to buy these cars, and we’ve got them,” Kateley said. “Now we’re at the point where we’ve got to work on everyone else.”

General Motors has leased 465 cars since its landmark EV1 was introduced in December 1996, said Necole Merritt, a spokeswoman for Saturn, which is handling the leasing of GM’s electric vehicles. The vehicles currently are leased in six markets in California and Arizona at a pace of about 30 or so a month, down from the initial surge of more than 70 the first month.

“We are very comfortable with the results so far,” Merritt said. “This is not a normal product introduction” because of the vastly different technology involved, she said.

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Under the new incentive program, which the auto makers will administer, the commission will provide $500 and the auto company will match that amount for each vehicle leased. The South Coast Air Quality Management District will add another $250 per vehicle for residents of the district.

The commission is allocating an initial $100,000 per auto maker.

Electric vehicles are “‘still very much in the very early marketing stage,” said Robert Hayden, executive director of the Electric Vehicle Assn. of the Americas, a San Francisco-based trade group. Between 1,000 and 2,000 EVs were leased nationwide in the last year, he said.

“There were really no fixed expectations because it was known from the start that it would begin very slowly in some pilot markets,” he said.

Hayden said the new incentive program should boost sales because “it’s very important to get the charging infrastructure in place so that people feel comfortable knowing that there will be places to recharge.”