New Chargers Please Electric Van User

Barbara Lord used to drive her electric car to work with the windows open, afraid that cranking up the air conditioner might exhaust the car’s battery. She shunned errands along the way, nervous that any extra mileage would strand her vehicle on some freeway.

A clinical nurse specialist at Kaiser Permanente’s medical center in Woodland Hills, Lord plugged her Honda minivan into an electric charger each night at her Valencia home to re-juice the battery for the next day’s 58-mile round trip. Now, thanks to new chargers recently installed at Kaiser, Lord is free to blast her air conditioner as she rolls through the summer heat.

“Now I start with another fully charged battery when I leave work,” she said. “It gives you more peace of mind because I don’t worry about whether I’ll be able to make it home.”

On Friday, Kaiser celebrated its two electric charging stations at an all-day Energy Fair. Several electric vehicles were on hand at the medical center for people to test-drive. The vehicles are virtually emissions-free, making them 97% cleaner than cars fueled by gasoline.

The chargers, which the public may use free, are part of a push by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to install 200 new charging stations throughout the county. There are about 600 electric vehicles and more than 150 public charging stations in use here, said DWP spokeswoman Darlene Battle.

The Department of Water and Power bought the $2,500 chargers with grant money from the Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Review Committee, a panel of elected officials from Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, Battle said. Kaiser paid $3,500 to install the machines. It costs $1 to fully recharge a vehicle, which takes about three or four hours.

“Since most of the air pollution in the Los Angeles basin comes from conventional cars,” Battle said, “we’re trying to promote the electric vehicles as a way to clean up the air.”