Tourist towns need EV charge stations if they want future success

Most electric vehicle (EV) charging takes place at home.

But, what if you’re not home?

Suppose that Jenelle and I decide to go to Portland, Ore., with a detour to Multnomah Falls, for a weekend of scenic hiking and sneaker shopping, capped off with a couple of Portland’s giant donuts.

It’s a 260-mile trip from La Conner to Multnomah Falls, plus 30 more miles into Portland, plus some driving around to Big Sneaker stores and the donut shop, before heading to a hotel. Then, there’ll probably be some more local driving around the next day before heading back to La Conner and scone sweet home.

The nominal range of our Chevy Bolt EV is about 300 miles between charges, although that varies, mostly based on outdoor temperature and how much we use the heater and air conditioner. I’m confident we could make it to the falls from La Conner without recharging, but it would be nice if we could recharge the Bolt while hiking, before heading into Portland. That’s an ideal situation for a public Level 2 (240 volt) charger, like the ones La Conner has behind the library and south of Pier 7.

However, it’s not obvious that the U.S. Forest Service has put chargers in at the Falls parking lot. So, we’d probably choose to leave La Conner in time to have lunch and recharge for an hour or two in nearby Troutdale, before heading to the park itself.

Having public chargers thus provides a business opportunity for a Troutdale restaurant and nearby shops. Without public chargers there, we wouldn’t stop there.

In Portland, it’s fairly easy to reserve a room at a hotel that has a Level 2 charger, so we could recharge overnight. If the Big Sneaker shop has a public Level 2 charger, we’ll probably top up there too. Or, if Big Sneaker has a faster Level 3 charger, we won’t need to worry about charging at the hotel; we’ll just be able to fully recharge within sneaker-shopping time.

So: Going to Portland, a big city with lots of charging options, from La Conner in an EV? No problem.

But what if an EV driver is going from Portland to La Conner? Or, more likely, from Portland to the San Juans or Vancouver, B.C.? How can we get them to stop in La Conner?

For now, if we had more public chargers, it would give us a business opportunity. Plenty of Level 2 chargers, and a few Level 3 fast chargers, would make us a stopover destination for EV drivers. Our lodging, restaurants and other shops could attract tourists who might not otherwise get off I-5 and come to La Conner, because the EV drivers would be confident they could leave La Conner with a full battery, in addition to some fine art and delectable scones.

As EV market share inexorably and inevitably increases, though, there’s a dark side. If there aren’t enough public chargers in La Conner, our hypothetical Portland tourists will bypass our small town, and we’ll wind up like Radiator Springs, in the movie “Cars,” with all the local businesspeople trying desperately to shop at each other’s establishments; gradually fading away, without nearly as much hope as a town on Route 66 that a lost stock car driver will eventually put us back on the map.