“It has really taken off,” said Mandy Campbell, director of sales at Hilton Garden Inn in Johns Creek. “On a personal level I was very excited, and our owners just jumped on it.”
Campbell said within a week of installation visitors were charging their cars at the stations.
“There are not that many hotels that have them, and what a perfect place for them,” she said. “You want to show you’re interested in that infrastructure but we were shocked to see how fast they were being used.”
Campbell said another Hilton Garden Inn on North Point also installed the Blink charging stations.
The stations were built with a grant from ECOtality, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through a federal stimulus grant.
“ECOtality’s selection of Atlanta recognizes that our region is an ideal deployment community for electric transportation. The EV Project is helping us accelerate the charging infrastructure in this area, which is the most critical element to increasing the EV adoption rate”, said Matthew Patterson, Director of Advanced Manufacturing at the Metro Atlanta Chamber, in a statement.
Campbell said electric vehicles are a kind of “chicken before the egg” problem, but they have had success so far in finding guests who utilize the charging stations.
“If you build it they will come,” she said.
Stephanie Cox, ECOtality’s area manager, is still recruiting businesses and others to become host sites for the free charging stations. The stations are initially providing free charging but will eventually adopt a pay-as-you-go model.
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