Ecodisaster

SAN DIEGO — San Diego’s leading car sharing company will soon replace its all-electric vehicle fleet with gas-powered cars due to a lack of charging stations, a symbolic setback for the emission-reduction aspirations of the city’s ballyhooed climate action plan.

Electric cars are key to the ambitious plan’s requirement to cut carbon emissions in half by 2035, and car sharing plays a major role because it can fill small gaps in commutes that feature mass transit or bicycling.

City and environmental leaders said on Wednesday that the decision by Car2Go should be a call to action.

“It’s a lesson to all of us that we have to work harder to build the infrastructure necessary to support electric vehicles and other transportation modes,” City Councilman Todd Gloria said.

Nicole Capretz, a consultant who was the primary author of the city’s climate plan, said the Car2Go decision is a frustrating step in the wrong direction.
“It’s disappointing because we as a city are on a pathway to a 100 percent clean energy future and we can’t do it without converting our vehicles to electric,” she said.

Car2Go has about 400 vehicles, amid hundreds of thousands on San Diego roads. But alternative fuel advocates see the retrenchment as a setback.

“This is a step backward, so we have to regroup and figure out some new solutions,” Capretz said.

Officials said part of any solution will likely be a plan San Diego Gas & Electric finalized in late January to install 3,500 charging stations across the county over the next three years.

That won’t happen quickly enough for Car2Go to reconsider the switch, which starts May 1 and should be complete within a month.

The company made San Diego the only North American city with an all-electric fleet when it launched service here five years ago, but company officials say that’s no longer sustainable.

A federally subsidized nonprofit called Ecotality had promised to install 1,000 charging stations across the city back then, but only 400 of those stations are in place because the company declared bankruptcy in 2013.

“What we expected as far as charging infrastructure versus what we were delivered just hasn’t added up,” said Car2Go spokeswoman Dacyl Armendariz.

“We’re just not able to keep the cars charged, and people aren’t able to charge them on their own,” she said. “We’re still committed to electric vehicles — it works in some of our cities in Europe where they have more robust charging infrastructure. We just don’t have the infrastructure we need here to make it work now.”

Many of the company’s 40,000 San Diego members say they often worry their Car2Go will run out of charge before they finish their trip, Armendariz said.

A fully charged Smart Car running on electric can travel a maximum of 65 miles, while a fully fueled Smart Car running on gas can go 342 miles, she said.