Stacy Milheiser is moving from electric vehicle to electric vehicle (EV) with a clipboard, acting as event judge for this year’s crop of brand new vehicles. In this case an electric Chevy Equinox.
It’s Evansville’s third annual electric vehicle cruise-in event, EVs for EVVeryone, held on a rainy Saturday. Her name tag’s ink is already runny.
“I'm judging from the consumer side of it, on things that somebody who has never driven an EV before and is interested in looking at one,” she said.
She’s with the Lochmueller group, but her background is in EV charging, EV funding and planning for cities. She’s asking Richard Steiner with the Hoosier Electric Vehicle Association about the charging port — specifically how it works with the proprietary Tesla charging port.
“If you want to charge at a Tesla station, you're going to have to wait for the adapter to come out, or you buy it,” Steiner said.
“So you can buy the adapter separately — what kind of a cost is an adapter right now,” Milheiser asked.
There are 190 EV drive-in events during the national Drive Electric week, and more are coming. Indiana held events in Evansville, Portage and Indianapolis.
The state of Indiana is working to improve electric vehicle infrastructure to spur EV adoption.
Charging the Crossroads is the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) program to use nearly $100 million in federal money to build a charging infrastructure as part of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program (NEVI.)
This is the middle of the five-year program.
“Every state is allotted a certain amount of money,” Milheiser said. “They have to build out charging stations within their state. They have to be 50 miles or less apart and no more than a mile off of the major thoroughfare.”
It’s a complicated planning process. Milheiser said about half of the NEVI sites are identified and approved and they’re in the third round of contractor bids — “and then we're going about with our next round of bidding for the next sites.”
That infrastructure is one hang-up with individuals going electric. Another is battery range and the ability to do the work of an internal combustion engine.
Take for example, a diesel engine that can haul massive payloads. John Heichelbech is a design engineer for electric vehicles for Cummins Inc. in Columbus, Indiana.
“It's pretty much true that a gallon of diesel fuel holds a tremendous amount of energy, and we're nowhere close to that with lithium ion batteries,” he said.
Heichelbech’s group designed the drivetrain for the Bluebird electric school bus. He said it will be a while before EVs can handle the heavy lifting.
“So we lose payload when we go electric which is why it works well for little buses,” he said. “It works for Frito Lay for if you're hauling potato chips — they're an early adopter. But it doesn't work for hauling 80,000 pounds very well, because all of your batteries are coming out of your payload.”
Indoors, musician Monte Skelton and co. provide the background music as families check out various activities.
Caroline Nellis is event organizer. She said the local EV movement is more organized since the event was new in 2022. There’s more participation from local dealerships. She’s personally observed an increase in E-Vs and gas-electric hybrids locally.
“I had somebody who just was out in California, and they said out there, it was almost a one for one match between gasoline-engine cars and EVs,” she said.
Greater Indiana Clean Cities Executive Director Kaylee Dann said federal tax credits are encouraging individuals to give EVs a try. “Individuals who maybe were priced out of electric vehicles are more able to purchase those vehicles,” she said. “Because the price point is coming to be more equitable.”
Her non-profit works to advance the growth of EVs across the state helping vehicle fleets electrify for example.
She says between 2016 and 2022 there has been a 100-percent advancement of electric vehicles according to the EV Product commission.
“And that coincides with all of this economic development activity that's happening. All of the recent announcements of manufacturing coming in battery facilities, so there's a lot happening in that front which is spurring adoption as well.”
Entek, a lithium ion battery producer, announced a $1.5 billion investment into their Terre Haute facility last spring.
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