Fremont ranked high in a recent funding opportunity issued by the California Energy Commission, with both the City of Fremont (under the Bay Area Charge Ahead Project) and the Fremont Chamber of Commerce on the proposed notice of award list for the installation of publicly accessible electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure. With only one Level 1, 25 Level 2, and 12 DC fast charging ports currently available to the public in Fremont, these two funding awards will more than double the number of Level 2 stations and increase the total number of publically accessible EV chargers in Fremont to 72 ports.

Under the Bay Area Charge Ahead Project (BayCAP)—a consortium led by the Bay Area Climate Collaborative in collaboration with ChargePoint, ABM, the California Electric Vehicle Alliance—the City of Fremont will receive a total of eight publicly accessible, dual-port Level 2 electric vehicle chargers. Six of these chargers will be installed at angled parking spaces along three separate blocks of Capitol Avenue as part of the Capitol Avenue Extension project in Downtown Fremont. Another charger will be placed at the City’s Development Services Center, whose Permitting Department attracts many daily visitors. The last charger will be placed at the Boathouse in Fremont’s Central Park, which is the most heavily used park in the city. These eight publicly accessible EV chargers with 16 ports coming to the City of Fremont are only a small portion of the total 66 EV charging stations with 152 ports to be deployed across 19 agencies in the Bay Area under BayCAP. Over the next 10 years, the infrastructure supported by BayCAP is projected to result in net reductions of 10 million kilograms of CO2 compared to the global warming pollution of regular gas vehicles.

In addition to the funding coming to the City of Fremont under BayCAP, the Fremont Chamber of Commerce is negotiating its own CEC award that would fund the installation of six dual-port Level 2 and two dual-port DC fast chargers at Fremont’s Bayside Business Park along the I-880 corridor. To showcase their plans for these publicly accessible workplace chargers and demonstrate the benefits of EVs to the community-at-large, the Fremont Chamber of Commerce plans to set up an EV display at this year’s Fremont Festival of the Arts on August 2 and 3. They will display several different EVs (including a Tesla) as well as demo EV charging stations.

On August 9 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Fremont residents will have another opportunity to view and even get behind the wheel of electric vehicles at “Experience Electric – The Better Ride,” a free public event at the Pacific Commons shopping center at the corner of Christy and Curie streets. Event participants can test-drive the newest EVs on the market in a hassle-free, no sales environment. This event is offered by the City of Fremont in partnership with the California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE), Charge Across Town, and Plug In America with funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). 

The Bay Area currently has nearly 40 percent of the plug-in electric vehicles in California at around 25,000 vehicles. With nearly 1,600 of those vehicles owned by Fremont residents, Fremont is responsible for 30 percent of all of the electric vehicles in Alameda County. In fact, Fremont’s 94539 zip code has been issued more EV rebates than any other single zip code in California! Supporting electric vehicle infrastructure is one key way that Fremont is facilitating the adoption of cleaner methods of transportation, helping to achieve the stringent community-wide GHG emissions reduction goal of 25 percent by the year 2020.