The City of McCall is working to make electric vehicle charging more accessible within the community.
On Thursday evening, the McCall City Council will hear a presentation about installing Tesla Level 3 charging stations — or Tesla Superchargers in a public lot. City staff worked with Commercial Charging Northwest on the project and landed on a public parking lot off Mill Street for the potential EV chargers.
Tesla Supercharger offers a fast charge, adding 200 miles of driving range in 15 minutes. These chargers currently only work for the Tesla brand unless the station has a Magic Dock adaptor, which this project doesn’t call for. But recently, several major automotive companies have announced that they will adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard port. Car and Driver reports that some of these brands will offer adaptors or start using NACS on their EVs.
The city council packet stated the potential project would include eight chargers. Tesla would manage the permitting, operation, and installation and the stations would be an open network. In addition, Tesla would “cover all upfront costs” related to the installation. This includes utility costs, ongoing electrical payments for the site, construction costs, and infrastructure investments.
This is just the introduction of the project to council. If council likes the idea, they will ask that staff put together a lease for the project. At this point, none of this has been finalized.
More charging stations planned
In addition to the potential Tesla chargers, McCall Community and Development Director Michelle Groenevelt says there are other plans in place for electric vehicle charging.
In September 2022, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality and the Office of Energy and Mineral Resources granted Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment Program money to 12 recipients around the state. May Hardware in McCall was one of those recipients. The hardware store will soon feature eight charging ports in its parking lot.
Groenevelt says the city also plans to install chargers in the public parking lot behind 1st Street — but this project must comply with grant funding. In addition, there is a plan for chargers behind City Hall but these are not yet funded.
Groenevelt said that the chargers at May Hardware should be the first to come online out of all three projects.
