Upside of Life: The first of many

The idea of owning an electric car is a noble one. The electric car doesn't use nearly as much fossil fuel as its gas-burning cousin, and its better for the world, the region and everyone around you.

But, let's be honest here--unless you plan on keeping your travels pretty close to home or bringing an extension cord everywhere and plugging into whatever outlets you can find, running an electric car in the Upper Peninsula didn't seem like a very practical idea.

The range of a completely electrical car (those without gas engines to help them along) is typically pretty short. Take the Nissan Leaf, for example. It goes about 100 miles on a single charge. The Mitsubishi iMiEV goes about 99. The Ford Focus EV? 100. The Volkswagen E-Up! Goes about 80 and the Smart fortwo Electric Drive goes around 72. Of course, to be fair, that isn't the case in every electric car. The Tesla Motors Model S goes 300 miles on a single charge and the Roadster version made by that company goes 244--of course, they carry a price tag of approximately $43,500 and $87,000, respectively. Those cars sporting an electric motor as well as having a gas motor equipped can also go much farther on a charge and a tank of gas than their electric-only counterparts.

But for those looking to be 100-percent electric? Getting from Gwinn to Marquette and back without a charge would be a bit of an issue, let alone going from Houghton to Iron Mountain or Menominee to Escanaba or between almost any other two population centers up here.

Marquette, however, made steps recently to help make that problem a thing of the past. The city's Downtown Development Authority recently installed the "Plug-in Electric Power Stations" in the Bluff Street parking structure. The addition of the stations were part of an upgrade to the quarter-century structure that included LED lighting and some yet-to-be-installed extra bike racks.

One downside is that the stations aren't operational yet and aren't expected to be until a future date--sometime before the throng of tourists arrives with the summer weather. The snag is that they aren't hooked up to the Internet, which is required in order to allow them to operate correctly.

The PEPS are easy enough to use once they do get up and running. You plug your car into it (there is room for four cars to do so) and then you swipe your credit or debit card and use the touch screen to select what you would like to do. The stations don't, unfortunately, take cash (As an aside, this a growing trend that is working against the prospect of consumers carrying paper money, despite fees associated with credit card use and charged to businesses.).

According to carstations.com, there aren't any other charging stations operational in the Upper Peninsula. The city of Houghton, last year, was considering the possibilities of installing some in order to accommodate electric-car users in that region--something the folks here at U.P. Second Wave hope to see move forward.

The closest charging stations, against according to our friends over at carstations.com, are over in Green Bay, while the closest in Michigan are in Traverse City.

Marquette definitely took a step in the right direction with the installation of these PEPS, and we hope to see other DDAs, cities and institutions follow the lead. Creating a better environment is never a bad thing, and helping those dedicated to such a cause with a little bit of convenience is applaud-worthy.

Sam Eggleston is the managing editor of UP Second Wave. He was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula and would be willing to drive a Tesla around if the company wanted someone to test them in the region. He can be reached via email.