TENNESSEE, USA — Currently, in Tennessee, 15,000 electric vehicles are on the road. In the next six years, the Tennessee Valley Authority plans to see that number jump to 200,000.
With a rise in demand for electric vehicles, the need for electric charging stations rises too.
Travis Reid is with the TVA and he said Tennesseans are ready to make the switch to electric.
“When you look at an electric vehicle it’s more like a cell phone than it is a car,” Reid said. Like a cell phone, you charge an electric vehicle overnight. Drivers just need an outlet.
“This is a plug that everything goes into in your house, 120 volts. And this is a home level 2 charger, or a portable level 2 charger, and you can see that’s the 240-volt plug that your dryer or stove will plug into,” Reid said.
And charging stations power electric cars the fastest – in less than an hour. Reid said the plug drivers choose depends on how soon they need to charge and how far they drive daily.
“Map out what your daily drive looks like. Because a lot of people think they drive way more miles than they actually do,” Reid said.
As for longer road trips, TVA said they plan to put charging stations like these on Tennessee interstates every 50 miles.
So far Tennessee has 1,400 charging stations.
“Once you start looking for them on the road, you’ll see a lot more than you thought there were, cause Nashville alone, there’s hundreds around the city,” Reid said.
To charge an empty electric car battery completely in Tennessee, it costs $7.70. Reid said in total, drivers could save $1,000 a year. “Say you have a roundtrip commute of 50 miles; you’re looking at less than $2 a day.”
Saving money at the pump, by simply plugging in.