Customer Comment: Electric Car Charging

Dear City Market,

I notice that you have an electric car charger in your parking lot. Can you tell me about this charger and what heads it uses (various ones charge cars at different speeds)?

Thanks, Driving Electric

Dear Electric,

Thank you for your inquiry. City Market’s car charger has a 208v plug option. We’ve had to lock our charger and make the power available upon request due to earlier vandalism. The charger was made by Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Incorporated (EVII) and was installed when the store was built with the idea that we would support electric vehicles as part of our mission. The flipside to supporting electric vehicles is that these plugs are not standardized across the industry, so different manufacturers use different plug hook ups.

The purpose of the 208v is to charge vehicles more quickly, and this fits with our policy of only allowing customers to park in our lot while shopping. At the same 208v charging station there is a 120v outlet which many electric cars do have. These electric vehicles are made to be charged for 8 hours and anything less is usually inadequate; however, with our parking policy we cannot allow this.

Green Mountain Power is installing some 120v charging stations throughout Burlington, but the spots are not currently reserved for electric cars. You can read more about their project here.

Sincerely, City Market