Blacksburg is joining the list of southwestern Virginia Towns with high speed chargers for Electric Vehicles or EVs. Virginia Clean Cities has already put twenty of them in places like Richmond, Hampton Rhodes, and Charlottesville.
Many of these “DC Fast Chargers” around the state are free to use. It's part of plan to help create an infrastructure for plug in cars. Matt Wade is Deputy Director of Virginia Clean Cities. He says it’s a ‘chicken and egg’ situation they’re trying to address.
“People say, ‘Oh Well’ you don’t have infrastructure, no one’s going to buy or use electric vehicles and if you don’t have electric vehicles, no one is going to use the infrastructure so we're working with some partners to just put the infrastructure in and hopefully that will encourage people who are the fence who see there’s no charging station near them but now there’s a charging station down the street or on their commute or at their workplace.”
It takes about half an hour for a full charge on a DC Fast Charger. Not all electric vehicles can use these high-speed charging stations.
Blacksburg’s new DC Fast Charger will be installed this Wednesday, October 14, in the municipal building parking lot.
