Berkeley Gas Pump EV Charger

Why is it here?

I needed something to attach a new car charger to, so I bought this old pump that had been sitting unused in a nearby Berkeley yard for a few decades. At first the idea was simply to put the charger in the shell as a piece of yard art, but it seemed like an interesting challenge to get the original display working properly.

How do the gallon and price display work?

When I got the pump, everything was completely seized up (as you’d expect for something untouched for 40 years). I removed (and saved) the gasoline-specific parts to make room for the car charger, but left the broken display unit (the part that shows gallons and dollars) because it looked interesting.

How expensive is it to drive an electric car?

Our little blue Chevy Bolt uses about 7 cents of electricity per mile. An equivalent 30 mpg gasoline car uses about 16 cents of gasoline per mile at $4.50 per gallon. Put another way, driving an electric car — even with relatively high PG&E electric rates — is like paying $2.10 a gallon for gas. A 250-mile “full tank” costs about $17.50.