New electric car charging station coming to downtown La Crosse
LA CROSSE, Wis. (WKBT) — The city of La Crosse will soon have another electric car charging station for public use– this time in the downtown area. While a similar station was installed by the city at the airport. this would be the first one directly overseen by the parking utility.
Honda Motorwerks donated the car charging station to the Coulee Partners for Sustainability in order to send a message.
“As an eco-municipality, for them to be moving forward with more electrification of vehicles,” said Chris Schneider, owner of Honda Motorwerks.
The group then donated the “level two” charging equipment to the city.
“This particular level two charger, if [it] was empty, would take 2.2 hours [to charge my car],” Schneider said.
La Crosse’s parking utility plans on installing the one-vehicle charger in the new Pine Street parking structure.
“We’re having some other electrical work done in March. So, when they do that, then they’re going to put the charging station in,” said Jim Flottmeyer, coordinator for the parking utility.
In the meantime, he’s working on some of the logistics that are well-known to electric car owners.
“The timeframe of how long you can stay there to charge your vehicle [and] whether or not we’re going to charge to use the charging station,” Flottmeyer said.
The parking utility will be looking at other communities in the area to see how they provide this service. But by having another station in La Crosse, it could attract even more potential hybrid car owners.
“It encourages people to think about being able to use a car like this,” Schneider said.
Though Flottemeyer has already taken a few calls in the past from owners looking for the nearest charging station.
“It seems to be that that call is increasing. So, we’ll see how this one goes and then we’ll decide at some point down the road if we’re going to add an additional charging station,” Flottmeyer said.
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