The new Tesla electric cars have been in the news a lot lately but electric cars themselves are not new. Inside Jacksonville’s Jake Stofan explains a local initiative to expand electric car infrastructure on the First Coast.

 

Pete King explained he has a long commute to his first professional job out of college which is why he decided to become a hybrid electric car user,

“Basically I’m spending the same amount of money on my car payment and my gas as I was spending just on gas in my last car,” he said.

Hybrid cars are great for saving money but for people who are eco-conscious, it seems fully electric cars are the way to go.

Tesla has been one of the leading innovators in electric vehicle technology for the past couple of years.

Steve Button is an owner of a Model-S Tesla, which is a pretty pricey car and it’s basically the top of the line model out there right now.

With the reveal of the Model-3, though, Tesla hopes to bring their high tech vehicles to the average consumer.

“Most electricity is produced through fossil fuels oil, coal…however there is a huge economy of scale advantage when you’ve got a power plant generating electricity as opposed to an individual engine on a car which isn’t going to be as efficient as a large scale power plant,” Button said.

Teslas and other electric vehicles get about 350 miles on a full charge, which is plenty for the daily needs of the average driver. Still, the biggest worry people have when it comes to electric cars is range anxiety.

It just so happens that Telsa and companies like JEA are addressing this by placing free charging stations around local recreation hot spots.

There are two types of charging stations in Jacksonville -25 ChargeWell stations, which average about 10 miles of range for a half hour of charging, and then there is one lonely Tesla Super Charge Station which gives vehicles an impressive 170 miles of range for the same amount of charging time.

“If you’re an EV owner it’s fantastic obviously. The dealers, it’s obviously thank you for doing this. What these have done is as we’ve put these across the city we’ve now eliminated some of that range anxiety so you can get your car plugged in anywhere in the city,” Peter King, JEA Program manager said.

With plans already in the works to install more of both charging stations in the city, it seems like electric cars are here to stay.