Recharge your batteries by plugging into National Drive Electric Week

National Drive Electric Week, held Sept. 10-18, is a nationwide celebration of electric cars that involves more than 100 cities around the United States.

A local electric car rally is being staged in Las Vegas within the Springs Preserve on Saturday, Sept. 10, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Plug-in electric cars gather under a parking lot canopy of photovoltaic solar panels that track the sun during the day, while providing shade to the vehicles parked below.

Next to the solar-powered parking structure are two ChargePoint charging stations that provide four SAE J1772 AC Level 2 connectors that can connect electric car-charging ports to electricity derived from the sunlight shining above.

National Drive Electric Week originally began as National Plug-in Day six years ago through a partnership of nonprofit organizations that included the Electric Auto Association, Plug-In America and the Sierra Club.

Their combined objective has been to promote educational events about electric-car technologies, including how to use plug-in electric charging station infrastructure that is becoming more widely established on roadsides around the nation.

During April 2015, the Governor’s Office of Energy announced plans to partner with NV Energy and the Valley Electric Association to create a Nevada Electric Highway across the state that would allow more electric cars to travel between Las Vegas and Reno. Recharging sites would initially be installed along U.S. Highway 95 at intervals of 100 miles in Beatty, Tonopah, Hawthorne and Fallon.

Each site would include two AC Level 2 recharging connector plugs similar to the ChargePoint stations at the Springs Preserve, but also include a DC fast charging station that could recharge the battery pack in an electric car within less than 30 minutes, in order to travel quicker before having to stop at the next recharging point 100 miles away.

The Beatty site was installed by Valley Electric Association and activated in March at Eddie World, not far from the eastern entrance to Death Valley.

The Paiute Shoshone tribe in Fallon is hosting a charging site along the Electric Highway, which is under construction at this time and should be activated before the end of the year.

The Nevada Department of Transportation has partnered with NV Energy to install two more recharging sites at a highway rest stop in Hawthorne and on a highway junction near Tonopah that should be completed in early 2017.

The Governor’s Office of Energy is planning Phase II of the Nevada Electric Highway, which will add 24 more electric car-recharging sites to rural locations around the state during the next four years. The proposed locations are near major U.S. interstate highway corridors that connect Nevada roadways to five neighboring states, including Interstate 15, Interstate 80, Interstate 50, U.S. 95 and U.S. Route 93.

Attendees at the local electric car rally Sept. 10 will have a chance to visit with owners of different electric-car models available through local dealerships, as well as learn how to use the public network of plug-in charging stations located strategically around the Las Vegas Valley, many of them providing electricity at no cost to electric-vehicle owners.

The third annual Electric Juice Bar Crawl invites event attendees to ride in a caravan of electric cars that will visit public electric car-charging sites available at the Clark County Government Center, City Hall of Las Vegas parking garage, City Hall of North Las Vegas parking lot, an NV Energy campus, Tesla Motors Supercharger station in downtown Las Vegas and a DC fast charging station that is one of a dozen electricity “pumps” installed at Terrible Herbst service stations throughout the Las Vegas Valley.

Tahiti Village also hosts a DC Fast Charge station in its parking garage for public use near Las Vegas Boulevard South and Russell Road.

These recharging sites can be located through a mobile phone app like plugshare.com, but also usually are displayed on the GPS navigation systems of most electric cars as a map overlay.

Public recharging stations provided by ChargePoint, Green Lots and NRG EVgo are connected by a cellular signal to a nationwide cloud of computer servers that collect and disseminate their usage information in real time. While searching for a public charging site, electric-car drivers can monitor if nearby network plug stations are being used by other electric cars within their vicinity.

Plug-in hybrid electric cars and battery-powered electric cars can both be purchased today from local dealerships in Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas.

Plug-in hybrid electric car models, which have drivetrains that feature an electric motor coupled with either a gasoline engine or gasoline-powered electric generator, include the Chevrolet Volt, Ford Fusion Energi, Ford C-Max Energi, Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid, Porsche Cayenne S E-Hybrid, BMW i8 and BMW i3 REx.

Battery-powered electric-car models that rely on the electricity stored in a lithium-ion battery pack to provide power to an electric motor drivetrain include the Nissan Leaf, BMW i3 and Ford Focus EV. During the first quarter of 2017, local Chevrolet dealerships also will be featuring the new Chevrolet Bolt, the first affordable electric car in the mid-$30,000 price range that can travel over 200 miles on just the electricity stored in its lithium-ion battery pack.

A Tesla Motors service center in Las Vegas also has a showroom and staff that can help prospective buyers of a Tesla Motors Model S, Model X or Model 3 electric car order their vehicles online. The Tesla Motors Model 3 electric car is expected to be available by 2018 to presale customers who have already made $1,000 deposits toward this new model.

The Tesla Motors Supercharger network is a company-owned, fast-charge network that provides electricity at no cost to owners of Model S and Model X vehicles, so they can recharge their lithium-ion battery packs within one hour. Each Tesla Motors electric car has a range exceeding 200 miles, allowing owners to travel cross-country from coast to coast by connecting to Supercharger sites at over 600 strategic locations within the U.S. and Canada.

Tesla Supercharger station sites within Nevada are active already and available at Primm near the California-Nevada stateline on I-15 and in downtown Las Vegas near the corner of Bridger Avenue and Eighth Street.

Near U.S. 95 between Las Vegas and Reno, Supercharger sites are located at Eddie World in Beatty; the Tonopah Pocket Park on Main Street; Topaz Lodge in Gardnerville; Golden Gate Petroleum in Hawthorne; and the Atlantis Resort in Reno.

Along I-80, Supercharger sites also can be found at the Tesla Motors Gigafactory in Storey County; a Chevron station on Main Street in Lovelock; Pete’s Gambling Hall in Winnemucca; the Elko Junction Shopping Center in Elko; and the Peppermill in Wendover.

For more information about National Drive Electric Week, including a national map with locations to Las Vegas and Reno events, as well as more than 100 other participating cities, visit electricdriveweek.org.