Opinion: EV charging stations in the Yakima Valley foretell changes to come

Dec 03, 2023

Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data.

Mark Norman, left, and Frederick Pieters show off their electric vehicles during Sunday's National Drive Electric Week event at the downtown Yakima Farmers Market.

It must’ve been surreal, and a little unsettling, when service stations with tall, round-shouldered gas pumps first started cropping up around Central Washington.

Despite the doubters and naysayers, horseless carriages were here to stay. The days of saddling up for a quiet lope into town were coming to an end.

For better or worse, life would never be the same.

A century later, it’s all changing again. By 2035, state officials hope, every new car sold in Washington will be powered by electricity, not gasoline or diesel.

And suddenly futuristic visions are coming true in our everyday lives.

The most recent is Richland-based Energy Northwest’s announcement that it opened a new charging station for electric vehicles at the Grandview Museum in late June. Work begins this summer on eight more along U.S. Highway 12 — the White Pass Scenic Byway — the company said. The Highway 12 stations should be open this fall.

Energy Northwest has partnered with the city Grandview and other local government entities to get the EV charging stations up and running. They’re all part of the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Transportation Alliance project network, which has helped bring in several other stations around the Yakima Valley and in the Ellensburg area. All told, dozens of EV stations are now available locally.

At this rate, EVs look to emerge as the norm, not the odd-looking car that those strange people down the block brought home the other day. EVs — and services to accommodate them — will likely be increasingly prevalent in a few short years.

We doubt that’ll stop the arguments over gasoline- v. EV-powered vehicles anytime soon, though.

For the moment, EVs are still beyond the budgets of many of us, despite their promise of significant savings on maintenance and fuel. At the same time, EV opponents will take aim at everything from how the batteries perform and are produced to whether the electric grid can cope with heavier demands.

But as production gets more streamlined, batteries become more versatile, sticker prices shrink and more charging stations open up, we suspect objections to EVs will soften — maybe even by the state’s 2035 target goal.

Meantime, every EV that replaces a gas-powered vehicle offers another flicker of hope that our environment will be a little cleaner and a little more temperate.

For better or worse, life won’t ever be the same.

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