A handful of folks braved the steady rain Thursday morning in the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission parking lot for the chance to drive an electric vehicle. It was just one of several Electric Vehicle Boot Camps going on around the state to encourage Hoosiers to go electric.
Named Go Electric Vehicle Indiana, the new initiative aims to improve Indiana’s minuscule electric vehicle presence of 0.34%. Lake County has just 3,753 electric passenger vehicles, Porter County 2,073, and LaPorte County 670.
Steve Barnes, auto technology instructor with Michigan City Schools, was in line with two of his senior students. He’s working on a grant application hoping to fund electric vehicle charging stations at each of the buildings in his school district.
He and the students had just emerged from a session put on by Drive Clean Indiana in partnership with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management aimed at convincing locals to make the switch to electric. “We don’t want a person from California driving an electric car,” said Carl Lisek, executive director for Drive Clean Indiana. “We want a person in Lake County driving an electric car.”
Kevin Kirkham of NIPSCO’s strategy department was on hand to tell folks about the 10 fast charging stations it is installing through a program with Volkswagen for EV charging stations across the state. Funding for the program is from the state’s portion the Environmental Mitigation Trust created as part of Volkswagen’s settlement of Clean Air Act violations regarding diesel emissions from its vehicles.
The stations will be installed on the eastbound and westbound Indiana Toll Road in Portage, at the Lake County Visitors Center in Hammond, among other locales, and NIPSCO is looking to install more beyond these 10, “so you feel comfortable when you have a fleet you can drive anywhere,” Kirkham said. These will be in addition to 51 other fast charging stations going up throughout the state thanks to a $5.5 million grant from IDEM.
To compare the cost of operating an electric passenger vehicle compared to a traditional gas vehicle Kirkham gave some figures. He explained that NIPSCO will charge an energy rate of 40.6 cents per unit at its Level III charging stations, which, he said, is equivalent to paying about $3.40 per gallon for gas. Kirkham said the rate NIPSCO charges customers to recharge their electric vehicles at home on Level I or II chargers is less, with an equivalency of paying about $1.40 per gallon.
“Once you are full, however, we want you to take your car and leave,” he said of the public chargers. “We have a 10-minute grace period. If you don’t move your car you get charged $1 per minute.”
Those in the audience were made up mostly of men who already owned electric vehicles, eager to share tips and ask questions on apps and charging adapters, and women keen on ensuring the burgeoning field is open to all, not just as passengers, but as workers in the industry. Denise Comer Dillard, interim general manager for Gary Public Transportation Corp., was on hand to share the experiences of her agency in going electric with buses.
“One of the things I’ve heard the drivers say is, ‘I’m not sure this is on,’” Comer Dillard said. Getting to that quiet place was a long time coming. “The buses that Gary got, it took them years to get accredited,” said Lisek.
Belle Lee, of Michigan City, wanted to know about mentorship programs in the industry. “I don’t see it happening,” she said. “We don’t often see it because it’s not highlighted. There needs to be a humanitarian side.”
Ryan Lisek, program director for Drive Clean Indiana, said grassroots involvement is alive and well, citing the hiring of a woman-owned Gary contractor for the construction of charging stations for the GPTC project. “That is the goal,” he said. “To use real, local people.”
He also said Fortune 100 company Indiana-based Cummins is a supplier of charging station components, and DCI works with local IBEW electricians.
LaPorte High School senior Brandon Bubalo, of Westville, had only ever driven electric vehicles in and out of bays at the service center where he works. He thought it was really interesting how the state is involving communities, and not just leaving the transition to electric to individual drivers. “I didn’t know about the public transit system in Gary,” he said.
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