San Diego Embraces Electric Cars

There's no city in the country where the buzz about electric cars is quite like it is in San Diego, and with good reason. A recent study suggests that, despite its size, San Diego will be among the top cities in the country for electric car sales over the next seven years.

Pike Research predicts that San Diego, the seventeenth-largest market in the country, will be ranked fourth-highest when it comes to the sale of plug-in electric cars - behind only New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

In advance of this shift in usage, San Diego is preparing to support the widespread acceptance of plug-in electric cars. The City of San Diego is partnering with the local power company - San Diego Gas & Electric - as well as the University of California San Diego and private companies, on a project called Smart City San Diego. The public-private coalition aims to provide support for the consumers who choose to go green by buying a plug-in electric car.

"With the San Diego region currently preparing for one of the largest initial deployments of electric vehicles in the country, the first priority for Smart City San Diego is to expand current projects to implement a comprehensive electric vehicle infrastructure," says Mayor Jerry Sanders. "This is the first of many initiatives that our partners throughout the region will undertake to make San Diego the foremost resource-conscious community in the United States."

Green technology

Auto makers have specifically targeted San Diego and the rest of California as initial markets for their electric car models.

The second Nissan Leaf in the whole world was delivered to a San Diego driver in December 2010. San Diego will be one of 19 cities were the new Ford Focus Electric plug-in vehicle will debut in the fall of 2011.

The city was also among the initial launch markets for the Chevy Volt, Motor Trend Magazine's 2011 Car of the Year.

"It is natural that California is the lead market for Volt," says Brent Dewar, GM vice president, Global Chevrolet Brand. "Not only is it the largest automotive market, Californians are known to be leaders in adopting groundbreaking new technologies."

Green energy technology companyECOtality, with $144 million in federal stimulus funds from the U.S. Department of Energy, is installing hundreds of electric car charging stations in sixteen cities across the country, including San Diego.

"San Diego is one of the metropolitan markets we're installing electric vehicle chargers," says Andrew Hoskinson, ECOtality's area manager in San Diego. "Our project partners, which include Nissan and SDG&E, amongst many others, we're very supportive. The organizations are essentially creating the environment to make San Diego easy and ready,"

Going green

Private companies are also moving to take advantage of the surge in electric cars expected in San Diego.

• Best Buy stores in the area will install electric car charging stations in their parking lots, part of a national trend toward retail locations providing charging stations for customers.

• A San Diego McDonald's has installed a solar panel that powers a charging station exclusively for plug-in electric cars, so customers can charge their car while they eat their hamburgers and fries.