Incredible story. I didn't even know Costco had charging stations in their parking lots. Maybe the charging stations weren't being used because no one knew they were there. After all, all the reports out of Detroit suggests GM is building electric vehicles (the Volt) as fast as they can make them, and they are flying out of dealers' showrooms, so there should be dozens, if not hundreds of Volts out there. I guess they just aren't at Costco. Oh, that's right. Costco is for those who are watching their pennies. Anyone who can afford a Volt isn't worried about saving pennies.
Costco, the membership warehouse-club chain, was an early leader in offering electric-vehicle charging to its customers, setting an example followed by other retailers, including Best Buy and Walgreen. By 2006, Costco had installed 90 chargers at 64 stores, mostly in California but also some in Arizona, New York and Georgia. Even after General Motors crushed its EV1 battery cars, the Costco chargers stayed in place.Incidentally, our first home was in Vacaville, California -- the first house we bought.
Yet just as plug-in cars like the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt enter the market, Costco is reversing course and pulling its chargers out of the ground, explaining that customers do not use them.
“We were early supporters of electric cars, going back as far as 15 years. But nobody ever uses them,” said Dennis Hoover, the general manager for Costco in northern California, in a telephone interview. “At our Folsom store, the manager said he hadn’t seen anybody using the E.V. charging in a full year. At our store in Vacaville, where we had six chargers, one person plugged in once a week.”
This site needs a little music.
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