This story is the second of a two-part series on electric vehicles in Cape Cod and the Islands. Read part one here.
Cronig’s Market in Vineyard Haven is a lot like any other grocery store. Piles of vegetables, kids pulling on their moms’ arms, cashiers ringing out.
But what makes this store different is what’s outside.
Five years ago, Steve Bernier, the owner of the Cronig’s Market chain on Martha’s Vineyard, decided to make his business more eco-friendly by installing solar panels over the parking lot of his Vineyard Haven store.
“And from there the next thing was, ‘Oh, my gosh… what about electric cars?’” he said.
Bernier decided to install six charging stations for electric cars attached to pillars that hold up the solar panels.
The Cape and Islands are uniquely positioned for a boom in electric car ownership, with some calling the region a “ perfect” fit. But questions remain about whether the region, with its unique summer demands, is ready.
Bernier estimates that as many as 30 people a week use the stations to power up in the winter — a number that threefold in the summer.
“The customers have told me this package I delivered here helped them make a-- next time they bought a car--make a change,” Bernier said.
It’s good for the environment and for business.
“It's customer retention,” noted Anna Vanderspek, Electric Vehicle Program Director with the Green Energy Consumers Alliance.
Grocery stores, she adds, aren’t the only ones that can benefit from installing charging stations.
“So if you are a mall and you want to keep people in that mall a little bit longer, a charging station is great,” Vanderspek said. “If people who are renting their homes have a charging station, that's a benefit that could draw someone to pick that property over another for their stay.”
The reality is most electric car owners do not rely on chargers at malls or grocery stores. Around 90 percent charge up at work or home, but the population our economy depends on most, the summer visitors, are not home. They are here to get away from work.
“If you're coming here for a week for a vacation, you're completely off that normal charging system,” said Steven Tupper, transportation manager with the Cape Cod Commission.
“So we have to think… where are you going to be staying? Is there charging there? Where are you going to be doing your activities?”
He says the summer visitors who flood in will need charging stations — and in greater numebrs than what businesses and rentals alone can offer.
Tupper also said that town governments should offer the infrastructure to charge vehicles as well.
“When you see municipalities investing in [electric vehicle charging stations] I think you can tell more of a story of: ‘this is a place that welcomes [electric vehicles] and you're not going to have any range anxiety here on Cape Cod,’” he said.
Right now, the Commission is working on an Electric Vehicle Charging Station Analysis to create a clearer picture of future needs. There are fewer than 50 charging stations on the Cape and Islands, only a third of which are municipally-run. That means most aren’t open to the general public.
But the experts said that what's most important is their location.
“So, for example, [of about 17] community activity centers that we've identified across the region… [where there’s a] real concentration of activity, half of them don't have any publicly available [electric vehicle] charging infrastructure,” Tupper said.
Orleans and Aquinnah do not have any public chargers. But now those towns and others are looking at state incentive programs to fund charging stations in municipal lots.
Ultimately, Anna Vanderspek of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance says that by welcoming electric vehicles to the Cape and Islands, we can drive the region to a more sustainable future.
“If we really want to get to a net zero future or all of the various targets that we’ve set ourselves locally, on the state level, nationally, internationally,” she said. “We really can’t do it without electrifying transportation.”
