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- Blink close up
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- Blink close up
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- ESF’s Centennial Hall car charge station.
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- Close up of ‘Cuse Car at Blink station
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- A Blink station downtown
As we were dropping our son off for his next year of college, we found ourselves surrounded by EVs. It was great!
Syracuse is a happening place. And the Mighty Oaks of ESF are the leaders.
Cuse Car is a community-based non-profit for membership-based car sharing service in Syracuse. Their twist is renting you an electric car parked at one of the Blink electric vehicle charging stations around town. Two such EV stations sit next to the newest dormitory, Centennial Hall, on the Mighty Oaks campus.
We saw more Blinks being installed in downtown Syracuse. Ecotality produces the Blink here in North America. We did not try to use the Blink station, but it looks pretty user-friendly.
What a great idea for a city with thousands of college students!
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Caroline: Thanks! The Syracuse ‘Cuse Car model involves a local nonprofit working with public sector to locate sites and with private sector to furnish cars and charging stations. That public-private-partnership model can work anywhere that folks are interested in collaborating to build something better together than they could on their own.
In the case of Syracuse, it seems a good fit because of the large population of young adults (undergraduates and graduates) located in a city that has the need for occasional use of car (for a big shopping or day trip) and good distribution of potential locations with accessible space (universities parking lot, downtown underused lots) and good bus routes and bike lanes for getting to and from the car share without needing a car. In short, this should work well in Amherst, Ann Arbor, Athens (GA and OH) and many the other college towns, just to start with the “As”.