by Allen Best

Plug-in electric cars remain scarce in Durango, but city officials expect that to change. By July 1, charging stations in the downtown area will allow simultaneous recharging of up to five electric vehicles. A fully depleted Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid, could be rejuiced in four hours at one of the 240-volt chargers. The all-electric Nissan Leaf would take eight hours.

City crews have also been installing electrical conduit in 12 blocks of downtown sidewalk now being reconstructed. Installing PVC conduit, for electrical lines and fiber-optic cable, costs $6,500 for the mile-long corridor. Ripping up the sidewalk again and pouring new cement five to 10 years from now would be orders of magnitude more expensive. As demand grows, up to two charging stations per block can become available for public use.

Little demand exists now. Colorado Department of Revenue records show that La Plata County has only 16 fully electric cars, with 12 more registered in adjoining counties in Colorado.

City officials say they’ve been told by residents that they’re reluctant to invest in electric cars because of the lack of public charging stations. But officials also want to accelerate adoption of alternative fuels and see Durango as a trend-setter.

As the cultural heart, population center and economic hub, Durango drives regional innovation, says Mary Beth Miles, the city’s sustainability coordinator. Durango wants to accelerate adoption of alternative fuels.

Petroleum still overwhelmingly powers our cars. It provided 96 percent of fuel in Colorado in 2000, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, barely slipping to 94 percent by 2010. Electricity was a miniscule part of that change, growing from zero to just 0.05 percent.

Sales have accelerated since all-electric cars began arriving in showrooms two years ago. Plug In America recently estimated that 100,000 electric cars have now been sold. This does not include hybrids. Colorado was just a tiny portion of that, with 1,300 registered plug-in electric vehicles as of July 2012.

If those figures don’t bowl you over, consider the start of gas-electric hybrid cars a decade ago. Pike Research, a firm based in Boulder, found plug-in electrics are being adopted at double the rate of gas-electric hybrids in their first years. And La Plata County now has 427 gas-electric hybrids, with 165 more in Montezuma, Archuleta and San Juan counties.

Looking ahead to 2025, the Colorado Electric Vehicle 4 and Infrastructure Readiness Plan sees between 2.2 percent and 10.2 percent of all new light-duty vehicles each year being electric.

Will Toor, director of transportation programs at the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, a Boulder-based advocacy group, says he expects sales to grow slowly during the next couple of years, with more rapid growth thereafter. Higher gasoline costs could spur sales, he says.

Prices for EVs have been dropping, aided by federal and now state tax credits. Consider the Nissan Leaf, being sold at the Nissan dealership in Boulder for $30,000 to $31,000. With a $7,500 federal tax credit and a maximum $6,000 tax credit in Colorado, that brings the price down to between $17,500 and $18,500. That makes it competitive with conventional mid-line economy cars.

An EV could save an owner $1,000 to $1,500 per year in fuel costs, says Toor. Electric engines are 30 percent more efficient than internal combustion engines. Fuel is also cheaper. The same energy that costs $3.50 at a gas pump can be had for $1.10 in electricity.

Options for consumers have expanded. With Ford, Mitsubishi and even BMW now delivering models, consumers have 20 all-electric or plug-in hybrids to choose from. More options will be likely as manufacturers try to meet the federal government’s mandate of fleet-wide averages of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

Range anxiety, however, remains a major barrier to broad adoption. A new Leaf, for example, can flit down the road for just 75 miles. However, the battery degrades as it ages. A Tesla Roadster has a long leash of 221 miles, but if you have to ask how much it costs, you probably can’t afford it: $101,500

EV advocates say range shouldn’t be a problem for most people in cities. “The average person drives about 29 miles a day, which is comfortably within the range of an EV,” says Kim Tyrrell, of the Denver Metro Clean Cities Coalition. That car can then be refueled overnight by any ordinary 110-volt household charger.

For one-car families who need to make an occasional trip to Albuquerque, Denver or Salt Lake City, a plug-in hybrid like the Volt or Ford’s C-Max Energi remain the most practical option.

Other mountain towns of Colorado have also been installing chargers. Breckenridge and Carbondale tapped state grants to install charging stations. Vail, in contrast, installed its first two charging stations in 2009 and has now added four new chargers in its municipal parking garages. Aspen has some stations in its municipal parking garage, but it has held off on installing new stations along its downtown streets to see how technology may change.

Roaring Fork Transit Agency is installing 10 to 15 charging stations at its five park-n-ride lots for the bus-rapid-transit line from Aspen to Glenwood Springs, that will open in September.

Walgreens and Kohl’s have also installed charging stations at stores along the Front Range. Businesses see the cost of electricity as small and easily regained if a customer lingers long enough to spend $10 or $15.

New legislation in Colorado allows electricity to be sold by nonutilities. Durango intends to levy charges, but Miles, the sustainability director, says the fees haven’t yet been finalized. “There’s some research out there that about $3 per hour is the limit of what consumers are willing to pay,” she says.

The electricity costs far less, but the city also hopes to recoup the cost of infrastructure.

Why should we want electric cars? The safest, most common answer is that it makes the United States less reliant upon imported oil. That argument is less powerful now that the United States, with strikes in North Dakota, Montana and Texas, is poised to surpass Saudi Arabia in oil production.

Global warming provides a better argument. Transportation is responsible for 27 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases, says Toor. “If you want to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, you have to tackle transportation,” he says.

Even so, the mathematics of electric cars is messy. Petroleum has a larger carbon footprint than electricity. However, manufacturing batteries requires large amounts of energy. Because of that, natural gas vehicles may be as clean, or cleaner, than electric vehicles.

As utilities in Colorado add more renewables and natural gas to displace coal, the balance will tip, says Toor. With those changes, he expects the carbon footprint of electric cars to drop 36 percent by 2020, dipping below the carbon footprint of natural gas vehicles.