More than 300 charging stations slated for Orlando
Buffalo Wild Wings franchisee Andy Gross is looking forward to providing his customers a free "charge" for coming to his restaurant, eating food and watching a football game.
Two of his seven Central Florida restaurants will be among metro Orlando’s first locations to provide charging stations for electric vehicles.
It’s a move expected to boost customer traffic, said Gross, the president and CEO of Longwood-based Sunshine Restaurant Corp., which operates his Buffalo Wild Wings locations.
Gross is one of several Central Floridians interested in incentives designed to promote the emerging electric car market. It’s expected to pick up steam with the debut of new electric vehicles such as the Smart Fortwo Electric Drive, Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt — which should hit the streets in the next year.
The upside of the new vehicles: Electric cars cost consumers an average of 3 cents per mile to operate, while gasoline-propelled vehicles can cost 10 cents per mile on average.
Charging stations allow electric vehicles to plug-in via a pre-installed charging cord. It can take up to four hours to fully charge a depleted electric car, which can travel 60 to 130 miles on a full charge, reaching upward of 75 mph.
A multimillion-dollar effort called the ChargePoint America grant program by Campbell, Calif.-based Coulomb Technologies Inc. and the U.S. Department of Energy will award $37 million in grants to nine U.S. metropolitan areas, including Orlando, to help build infrastructure needed to promote the adoption of electrical cars.
Read the full story in the Orlando Business Journal.
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