California has more electric vehicles per capita than any other state in the nation, in part because policymakers seem to love them. Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed a whole sheaf of bills intended to hasten their adoption, and the city of Palo Alto — home to Tesla Motors — will require every new home to be wired for EV charging hardware.
The Palo Alto city council voted 9-0 in favor of a proposal that would require new single-family homes to come pre-wired for an EV charging station. It’s a nominal requirement, considering most homes already are wired for a 220-volt line — which is needed for a so-called Level 2 charging station that can charge most cars in about eight hours — because that’s the voltage needed to power a washer and dryer.
The decision came down to money (and politics, natch), with an eye toward “future-proofing” new homes for EVs. It costs just $200 to wire a new home for an EV charger, but can cost upward of $1,000 to retrofit an existing home. That’s on top of the cost of the charging station, which can run anywhere from $600 to $2,000. Not that it really matters to Palo Alto residents — the average home cost is $1.5 million.
“The thing that caught me is how simple and easy and fairly inexpensive it is to rough-in the wiring,” Vice Mayor Nancy Shepherd told the San Jose Mercury News.
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