Officials with the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation are scheduled to unveil a plan Wednesday to develop and fund more charging networks across the state to power electric vehicles.
The Tennessee Star on Tuesday asked officials with both agencies if enough Tennessee residents are driving electric vehicles to justify investing public resources into this infrastructure.
TVA spokeswoman Malinda Hunter, in an email, said her agency “is working to remove barriers to [the] adoption of electric vehicles.”
“By removing barriers to adoption, the goal is for EVs to become a viable transportation solution for everyone. We see an economic growth opportunity for Tennessee with EVs being produced here as well as the electricity to run them,” Hunter said.
“According to Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, Tennessee is committed to becoming an EV transportation leader in the Southeast with a goal to become the top state in the country for EV manufacturing.”
General Motors officials last month announced they would phase out petroleum-powered cars and trucks and sell only vehicles that have zero tailpipe emissions by 2035.
As The Star reported in October, GM officials will invest nearly $2 billion in its Spring Hill manufacturing plant in Maury County to build fully electric vehicles.
TDEC spokeswoman Kim Schofinski, meanwhile, said Wednesday that this new infrastructure will give EV drivers enough confidence that they will find electric charging stations along their route.
“Paired with recent news from the automotive sector – including GM’s news last week about transitioning to EVs – we are confident the demand for EVs and charging stations will continue to rise,” Schofinski said in an email.
In 2013 and 2015, Tennessee Watchdog found that people seldom used taxpayer-funded charging stations in Nashville. Documents from the U.S. Department of Energy made similar conclusions. Nationwide, 10,300 of the nearly 17,000 chargers at the time — 60 percent — were for residential use. Documents showed that more than 85 percent of people charged their electric cars at home instead of in public.
As Watchdog also reported, Tennessee officials in 2015 spent $181,250 to place three charging stations at the Nashville International Airport. In five weeks, 29 cars were charged for a flat fee of $2 each. At that rate, the charging stations would pay for themselves in about 300 years.
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation provided that money.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Be careful, there are so many people driving electric cars in Germany, and they have cut back on power generation to mostly “green energy” i.e. solar and wind, that people are now being told when they can charge their cars. Too much demand and not enough supply. Environmentalism at it’s finest.
This an absolute affront to common sense. And would put an undue financial burden of TVA consumers – virtually anyone using electricity within the TVA region. Private enterprise will provide charging stations when the market demands make it feasible. When is the government going to subsidize gasoline? Oh, that’s right. They tax gas and diesel with reckless abandon. If you use an electric vehicle (probably purchased with a federal subsidy) it was your choice and should not be my responsibility to pay your charging station.