In October, Plaid Pantry unveiled its first EV charging station in Portland, Oregon, with more to follow. The installation is the first from Electric Era Technologies, a company launched by former SpaceX engineers in 2019. The first charger is at a store that doesn’t not sell gasoline, but the next charging station will probably be at a site with gas, said Jonathan Polonsky, president and CEO.
“Portland specifically is really charging ahead with this concept of a green economy and incentivizing folks to switch to EV or at least hybrid vehicles,” he said. “I want to dip my toe in the water, educate myself, see what the reception is from our customer base and then make decisions that are based on quantitative information.”
While he doesn’t drive an EV himself, there could be one in Polonsky’s future “The city is making big pushes to try and educate and get people into these vehicles. They promoted a car fair where they had 20 or 30 different manufacturers bring vehicles to one location and then individuals could go look at them all and test drive the ones that they wanted to test drive. It was a good opportunity for us to get behind the wheel of a couple of them, which we did. After doing that, I could see myself or see us having an EV in the future.”