Plug In at Work.

                                                                 Have fun! 

EVs are fun. Quiet and quick. And they come in all shapes and sizes. Stealthy, perhaps. You can hide in plain sight and spring into action. Primitive hunter-urge maybe…with the electric go pedal. Silently sneak up on an unsuspecting victim and then warp-speed away when the light turns green, the other guy left in the dust and wondering. “What was that?”

                                                                Save money!  

• Initial purchase. The median price for new vehicles in the US at the beginning of 2023 is about $49,000. There are some quite capable electric cars with 200-mile range now available for about $30,000. Substantial Federal and State incentives bring the actual out of pocket to less than that. It’s a bit of tax money you can take back. 
• Maintenance. Federal Government vehicle data shows ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) costs at about ten cents per mile, electric vehicle, six cents. The Government Confirms Obvious: Electric Cars Cheaper to Maintain Than Internal Combustion Vehicles (motortrend.com)     
• Energy. When crude oil is $80/barrel, gasoline is $3.50 at the pump. In an ICE car going 12,500 miles per year at 25 mpg, goodbye $1,750 for fuel. (And...  maybe three quarters of that, about $1,300, leaves the state─your state .) With electricity at $.25/kWh, your electric car driving 3.5 miles/kWh will give you those 12,500 miles of service for $892.
• With back-of-the-napkin precision, and a "wag" on depreciation, your car might be worth 20% of its original value at the end of 10 years. Your modest EV that cost you $25K after incentives would be worth $5K (20 gone to depreciation). The guy who paid $49,000 would have $9,800 residual value (39.2 gone to depreciation). 
• Add it up. You save money. $32,780   

                              10 years          ICE          EV 

                               Depreciation $39,200         $20,000 

                               Maintenance $12,500           $7,500   

                               Fuel                 $17,500           $8,920  

                              Total Expense   $69,200          $36,420  

The neighborhood saves a bundle!

• Mentioned above, but often overlooked, or intentionally hidden by the guys who want you to keep buying gasoline, is the negative cash flow for places that don’t produce it. Connecticut loses approximately $10,000,000 a day. (Four million gallons imported at $2.50/gal.) For Massachusetts, on the order of $15,000,000 leaves the state’s economy every day to buy gasoline. Stupid...or what, if you don't have to do it? 
• An EV can go about 3.5 miles on a kilowatt-hour of electricity, more than 25 miles on 8 kWh. At $.25/kWh, that’s $2.00. But half that cost is for stuff (like wires and storm repair crews) other than the natural gas that produces the juice. About half, $1.00, leaves the state’s economy to buy fuel, instead of $2.50 (for gasoline). EV power is about a third as expensive to your economy as gasoline! 
• If all that daily imported gasoline was replaced with electricity, Connecticut could save a couple billion a year. Massachusetts even more. A ton of money staying home in your state’s home economy.

                                                        Save the earth! 

Battery electric drive for everyday transportation may be the lowest hanging fruit for getting a handle on our greenhouse gas problem. Low cost, arguably a less-than-zero net cost strategy, that can be implemented now...with modest investment.  

Roadways are a big, important piece of existing infrastructure. Alternative ways for moving people and goods may ultimately prove superior but implementing them on the scale required by the climate change mandate will take time. Building a rail-based system, is an expensive, decades-long project. For now, and the near future, we have to use our streets and highways. A switch to BEVs on existing infrastructure will significantly reduce CO2 emissions. Because...

Factors, including the basic physics, compound to make the ICE car terribly inefficient, 15% a likely real-world number.  Electricity is way better, maybe 80% efficient when you carefully consider all the losses. Even if you charge the battery with grid power from natural gas, your trip will contribute a whole lot less CO2. Less than half. Of course, charge with renewable energy and you can feel good about zero into the air. 

Not slowing GHG-caused global warming will impose burdens on multiple future generations, not the gift we want for our grandkids...and their grandkids. We must do this.  

                                                             Why the workplace? 

                                                                     The Nudge. 

Imagine! You’re at the top of the hill, looking past the tips of your skis down the run. It's steep. Then a tiny push from your partner and the race is on. Or how about when you were ten years old, standing at the edge of the pool, dipping a toe. The fun was the water and soon everybody was in it. Just a nudge. 

Looking down that hill, your brain was saying. “Yeah. Do it!” The legs. “Don’t wanna!” By the pool, it was the skin. “It’s cold!” But you jumped in. Fun! 

Now it's kind of the same, literally millions of us, workers mostly, standing at the edge, the brain saying. “Yeah. Do it!” Or. “Hell yeah, dummy!” “Look at the money you’ll save, and that climate thing...”  But we hesitate. This could be the nudge. 

Free! Nothing as satisfying as getting something free. How about free for the worker-bees, all of us, no matter what our job-title, a free ride to work. Let everybody charge their fun new car in the company parking lot…for free. Fifty miles of electricity every workday. From our bee’s perspective, never stopping at a gas station, and the company providing it free? What a perk! And I won’t even have to charge anywhere else.

                                   The Company’s Perspective...if they do the math?

 It really is a pittance, $3 or $4 worth of electricity. A perk as expensive as a cup of coffee. And the cost of the hardware is not very much either. In many cases a couple or three thousand dollars for each plug would be enough, thanks to incentives. Capital investment good for twenty years and it buys a thousand dollars a year of goodwill (and probably more honey) from employees and the neighbors.   

And a couple more pieces to the value proposition, beyond worker good will. What is the public image as a responsible and forward-thinking corporate citizen worth? And what would the HR Director say about the reaction of people outside your organization, the kind you want to recruit?

                                                        And One More Thought.

For some, it is just a matter of a nudge, nothing fundamental holding them back. There’s a garage at home, already an easy place to plug in and charge in the middle of the night. For others, plug at home is not an option, no easy way to get off the gasoline, a long extension cord out the window to the street is not okay. Not having a place to plug in really is a constraint.   

An apartment or townhome complex is home. Those folks drive ten or fifteen miles to work and park in the employee lot every day, all day long. For them, plug at work would mean leaving for home with plenty in the tank, enough for the commute and some errands and probably enough to make it around for the whole weekend. A bunch of folks. Nice perk, and a big nudge! 

But...

If your employer just doesn’t get it, the landlord might. That place where you go to sleep and park your car for the night, your apartment or townhome community is also eligible for funding to install EV infrastructure. Rebates pay for most of it, and then the landlord owns it. Maybe the place for a nudge.

                                                                 Have Fun! 

                                                               Save Money!  

                                                              Save the Earth!