Dan Eberhart, CEO of Canary, LLC. wrote:How will such an enormous network of charging stations be built? More important, who will pay?
Regarding the latter, it’s not unusual to hear the argument that government must fund charging infrastructure in order to make it viable for users to purchase EVs. But that’s not the case, or so we’ve learned from the forward-thinking Kansas City Power and Light (KCP&L).
Yes, you heard correctly. Forward-thinking. Utility company. Kansas.
In 2015, KCP&L put down $20 million to install 1,000 charging stations throughout its service territory of more than 800,000 customers. This was despite the fact that, at the time, there were only about 1,600 plug-in electric vehicles in the entire state, a quarter of them in the immediate Kansas City area.
Less than two years later, the utility had not only met its goal; it had exceeded it.
Today, there are more than 1,000 KCP&L-branded charging stations up and running in places like grocery stores, apartment complexes, and malls. In classic “if you build it, they will come” style, availability of charging infrastructure rapidly spurred EV uptake. The area straddling the Kansas-Missouri border is now one of the fastest-growing EV markets in the nation.
With one of the biggest barriers to EV acceptance out of the way, consumers came rushing in. And it all took place without a government mandate or dinging an unwilling taxpayer.
It’s not that KCP&L didn’t consult the government or attempt to pass along some of the cost to the public. It’s just that when the utility asked the Kansas state legislature for a boost in the form of a two- to three-cent monthly fee added to all customers’ bills, the response was a flat-out “no.” On the other side of the state line, Missouri legislators also nixed the request.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daneberhar ... structure/