The weekend before last, I was at the Edmonds Museum Summer Market talking about EV charging stations. Almost everyone who wants to talk about charging stations at the market wants more charging stations.
One person mentioned a concern about when a parking lot is full. The lot at the Public Safety Complex parking lot has two charging stations and fills up during the market. If you look for a spot there after the market starts, you might see the EV charging spaces empty, when there’s no place to park your gasoline car. That’s annoying.
It’s not just an issue where there are already EV chargers. The lot at the Edmonds Center for the Arts gets completely full when there are popular shows, and the Mountlake Terrace park-and-ride lot fill up almost every weekday. The Edmonds QFC lot fills up completely now and then. None of these lots have EV charging spaces yet. Even so, people show up and can’t park. That’s annoying, and adding EV chargers would make it extra annoying.
The core issue here is that we have places that, now and then, have more vehicles trying to park than parking spaces.
That’s why car drivers need more bicycle riders, or people walking, or taking public transportation. As you drive to an event at Edmonds’ Frances Anderson Center field, or to a park-and-ride, you may see people on bikes or walking. Those bikers and pedestrians aren’t going to take any parking spaces you might want. The same goes for public transportation. As a car driver, you can be grateful for every bike rider, every walker and every public transportation rider for leaving parking spaces for you. Thank you, bike riders, for making car driving easier. We need more of you.
Just like we need more bicycles, we also need more electric vehicles. When people switch to electric vehicles, they stop buying gasoline. If you’re getting gas at Costco on a Sunday afternoon, you have to wait quite a while for an open pump. You might see a Tesla or Rivian drive by. You can thank those Teslas and Rivians for not making the lines even longer.
You may have noticed that demand for gasoline goes up in the summer, and higher demand drives higher prices. Electric vehicles don’t burn gasoline. Their road trips don’t push gas prices up in the summer. If you drive a gasoline car, you can thank the electric vehicles for reducing those summer price hikes.
Luckily, the number of electric vehicles in Edmonds, Lynnwood, and Mountlake Terrace is increasing. Electric vehicles are up 44% over last year. At the start of July 2023, there were 1,658 electric vehicles registered in Edmonds, Lynnwood, and Mountlake Terrace. By the start of July 2024, there were 2,384, according to data from the Washington State Department of Licensing.
How fast new electric vehicles are purchased has plateaued. In the second quarter of 2024, 1,082 new vehicles were purchased and registered in Edmonds, Lynnwood, and MLT. Of those, 16.36% (177) were electric vehicles. A year earlier, in the second quarter of 2023, 16.53% of new-vehicle purchases were electric vehicles. The EV percentage of new-vehicle purchases has held basically steady.
This plateau in electric vehicle purchasing happened all over the United States. New-car buyers are just as enthusiastic about electric vehicles as they were a year ago. At the same time, it’s news that they are not more enthusiastic. Throughout 2023, the portion of new-car buyers buying electric vehicles increased dramatically. This holding steady in 2024 is a change.
What is driving this plateau? It could have to do with Tesla’s cutting the model Y price from $67,000 in 2022 to $32,000 now. That teaches buyers to wait for better prices. Tesla sales are about half of the market. Inspiring Tesla buyers to wait a couple years makes a big difference for the entire industry.
Update on natural gas
I’ve been sharing news about Edmonds natural gas burning each quarter. This quarter’s update is that Edmonds continues reducing its natural gas burning. From April 2022 to March 2023, Edmonds burned 1.39 billion cubic feet of natural gas. In the next 12 months, from April 2023 to March 2024, Edmonds burned 1.04 billion cubic feet of natural gas, according to tax data published by Edmonds. That is 26% less in one year. Last winter was warmer than the winter before, but not enough warmer to bring down gas burning 26%. Edmonds gas burning is changing.
I’m sorry I can’t report on Lynnwood or Mountlake Terrace. I don’t have access to natural gas burning data from Lynnwood or Mountlake Terrace.
Nick Maxwell is a certified climate action planner at Climate Protection NW, teaches about climate protection at the Creative Retirement Institute, and serves on the Edmonds Planning Board.