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Apartment Building Allows Electric Cars To Charge Up

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- You may have considered buying an electric car, but asked,  "Where will I plug it in?"

Suzanne Collins reports a new green apartment building in Baltimore has the answer.

At the Fitzgerald Apartments parking garage in Mount Vernon, two charging stations for electric cars were unveiled.

"I think what we're seeing is a revolution. What we're seeing is for 100 years cars have been filled with fossil fuels, and we're now moving to electricity and this is something really big," said Mahi Reddy, SemaConnect.

The electric charging stations are developed and manufactured by SemaConnect, an Anne Arundel County start-up.

Bozzuto Development plans to install the technology at half a dozen of its complexes.

"We believe in the coming years this is going to become the standard, so we wanted to be on the leading edge of it and be the first to do it," said Toby Bozzuto, Bozzuto Development Company.

The new electric Volt is already in showrooms and the plug-in Prius will be sold soon.  Homeowners who buy them would charge them in their garage overnight, but now the car may have a wider appeal.

Apartment dwellers who live in a city haven't really had a place to plug in an electric car, so by installing them in the parking garage it opens that market to a whole new demographic.

Because electric cars can also get extra mileage from a partial charge, the CEO of SemaConnect sees his charging stations everywhere in the future.

"We're going to install them in apartment building parking lots, shopping center parking lots, commercial parking garages and a whole bunch of other places," said Reddy.

If electric cars can get a quick charge all over town, more people are likely to buy them.

The driver gets a key that starts the charger, and then gets a bill for the electricity used.

SemaConnect is the only East Coast company making electric car chargers.

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