Publicly accessible EVSE stations in The EV Project are defined as those installed for businesses, institutions, and municipalities to provide charging for any plug-in electric vehicle (PEV). Typically, no formal relationship exists between the charging site host and the PEV driver utilizing the EVSE. Whereas, fleet, workplace, and residential charging stations are intended to serve a restricted population of PEVs with drivers formally related to the charging site host in some manner. Costs for installation of publicly accessible EVSE units were an important consideration of The EV Project, because these costs had an impact on host participation and, subsequently, on the public?s perception of PEV adoption. In an effort to achieve the objective of establishing and studying a rich infrastructure of publicly accessible charging stations, The EV Project intended to make AC Level 2 EVSE free to the host
including installation. This would have reduced the economic influence on the host?s decision to install a station at locations that the EV Micro Climate� planning process identified as desirable. Although The EV Project provided a significant allowance toward the cost of installation, in many cases, actual installation costs exceeded that allowance. Other concerns from prospective charging site hosts included the observation that there were not enough PEVs to create demand for stations, and hosts were being requested to effectively eliminate a customer parking space to be designated for PEV charging.