AntonioVillaraigosa
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Los Angeles pilot program offers up to $2,000 off EV charging stations
You can already get a pretty hefty federal rebate on an electric vehicle, and it looks like at least some folks in Los Angeles can now also save a good chunk of change on an EV charging station. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa just announced a new pilot program this week that will provide rebates of "up to $2,000" on home EV charging stations -- to the first 1,000 applicants, that is. That will apparently be expanded soon enough, however, with the city promising to begin accepting additional applications on May 1st, and eventually cover up to 5,000 EV chargers. Those receiving the rebate will also be required to participate in the LADWP's Residential Time-of-Use Rate that offers discounts for charging during off-peak hours, and the city will monitoring charging patterns in an effort to determine how to best allocate resources. Head on past the break for the full press release.
L.A. mayor wants muni WiFi by 2009
Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, wants municipal WiFi in his fair city, and he seems to have the wherewithal to make it happen. Such a project, covering 498 square miles of the sprawling city, would be a massive undertaking, costing somewhere around $54-$62 million. The city will probably partner with a private provider such as Google or Earthlink to pay for and manage the installation, and should be seeking bids this fall. Villaraigosa is already forming a working group, and plans on hiring an expert to iron out the details. Aware of the certain, ahem, problems encountered in San Francisco and other places, Villaraigosa says the initiative is "not going to be a study to put on the shelf." L.A. also owns its own street light and power poles and electric utility, overcoming an obstacle with Southern California Edison, which has denied WiFi installations a place on its own poles in other California cities. Of course, there are plenty of ways that a project this massive could go wrong, but if L.A. can pull this off it'll have some quite notable bragging rights, that's for sure.[Thanks, Gary N]
