by Shane Henson — February 8, 2013—The U.S. Department of Energy has announced that 13 major U.S. employers and eight stakeholder groups have joined the new Workplace Charging Challenge to help expand access to workplace charging stations for American workers across the country. According to the DOE, the new initiative aims to expand the availability of workplace charging, increasing the convenience of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) and providing drivers with more options.
The Workplace Charging Challenge is a collaborative effort to increase the number of U.S. employers offering workplace charging by tenfold in the next five years. The Challenge also supports the broader efforts of the department’s EV Everywhere Grand Challenge, which promotes the value of using PEVs and aims to make them as affordable and convenient for the American family as gasoline-powered vehicles within the next 10 years.
The 13 employers that have signed the Workplace Charging Pledge as Partners are 3M, Chrysler Group, Duke Energy, Eli Lilly and Company, Ford, GE, GM, Google, Nissan, San Diego Gas & Electric, Siemens, Tesla, and Verizon. The pledge commits each partner organization to assess workforce PEV charging demands, and then develop and implement a plan to install workplace charging infrastructure for at least one major worksite location, says the DOE.
As the DOE stresses, PEVs can offer consumers significant advantages over gasoline-powered vehicles, including savings on fuel costs, added convenience, and reduced maintenance costs. Electricity is cheaper than gasoline to power a vehicle—generally equivalent to about $1 per gallon—and consumers are able to conveniently fuel up at home, adds the Department.
