MOM’s Organic Market began installing EV charging stations at their stores beginning with their College Park and Timonium locations in 2011. Most of their eleven locations in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania have two Level 2 charging stations that are free to use.
Scott Nash, the founder of MOM’s, is a great supporter of electric vehicles. He has owned a Nissan Leaf and currently drives a Tesla Model S that he reluctantly switched to only because the bigger battery of the Tesla fit his needs for longer range trips better than the Leaf. Employees of MOM’s are eligible for a 15% subsidy towards the purchase of an electric car (up to $5,000) after one year of full-time employment.
The MOM’s store in Frederick, Maryland is the first to get DC Quick Charging. There are actually two units installed and both have the CHAdeMO standard which currently is only used with optionally equipped Nissan Leafs and Mitsubishi iMiEV cars.
The 25kW DC Quick Chargers are from Fuji Electric. The 25kW models are less costly to install than the 50kW DC Quick Chargers seen at most CHAdeMO installations. Fuji claims that the lower powered Quick Chargers only take an additional 7 minutes when charging from 30% to 77% because the 50kW charger quickly ramps down to below 25kW anyway as the battery gets full.
The Fuji Electric chargers at MOM’s both have a credit card pad for accepting payment but it is not activated and the cost is free as it is at all of MOM’s charging stations. While these stations currently are limited to use only on CHAdeMO equipped cars, the unique aspect of this charging location is that it has a pair of DC Quick Chargers. The redundancy is an important feature of this site. In general, DC Quick Chargers seem to fail much more often than normal L2 charging stations. When you are taking a trip and counting on a Quick Charger to speed you along, it is nice to have a backup that won’t slow you down. It would take several hours if you had to resort to a Level 2 backup station.
Thanks MOM’s for this plug in site in Frederick and at your other store locations.
