8 States Team Up to Increase Electric Car Sales
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: October 24, 2013


Monica Almeida/The New York Times
An electric vehicle charging station at a parking garage in Santa Monica, Calif. The coalition's goal is to achieve sales of at least 3.3 million vehicles that do not have any emissions by 2025.

WASHINGTON — In an effort to spur lackluster sales of electric cars, California, New York and six other states said on Thursday that they would work jointly to adopt a range of measures, from encouraging more charging stations to changing building codes, to make it easier to own an electric car.

...The states, which represent more than a quarter of the national car market, said they would seek to develop charging stations that all took the same form of payment, simplify rules for installing chargers and set building codes and other regulations to require the stations at workplaces, multifamily residences and at other places.

They said they would also promote hydrogen fueling stations, presuming that fuel-cell cars become more widely available. And they said they would promote “time of use” electric rates that would allow charging at off-peak prices, and expand incentives like high-occupancy lane access and reduced tolls and preferential parking. The states also said they would buy electric cars for their own fleets, and in some cases encourage their municipalities to do the same.

“There’s much that states can do, and perhaps even more that local governments can do,” said Mary D. Nichols, the chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board and a longtime promoter of electric cars. In a telephone interview, she said that electric cars were “in the midst of a start-up,” and she predicted that they would “go viral.”...