Gao, Beilei
From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
Robert Nowicki
Monday, February 2, 2026 8:34 AM
PublicComment-AutoResponse
2/2/26 Council Agenda Comment
Some people who received this message don't often get email from. Learn why this is important [ I ] CAUTION: This email was delivered from the Internet. Do not click links or open attachments unless you know the content is safe. Report phish using the Phish Alert Button. For more information about the Phish Alert Button view article "KB0011474" on the DolT portal.
City Council,
I writing concerning agenda item #3: The delivery method for upcoming electric vehicle charging projects. As a long time EV owner and resident of Pasadena, I have been closely following the buildout of City EV charging infrastructure. One of the two sites, the Arroyo charging depot, I use on a regular basis. This statement in the staff report doesn't adequately summarize the site history and issues: "While these chargers served commuters well initially, they have reached the end of their service life due to recurring maintenance issues and are no longer cost-effective to repair." The last several years has seen multiple different operators (PWPweb, Shell Recharge, etc.) attempting to keep these 6 units running, to no avail. I have no idea how much was spent over the last 5 years, but clearly the decision process that led to the selection of these specific EV chargers and the ongoing maintenance, or lack thereof, seemed questionable to me from the very start.
When charging my Tesla, I have watched countless vehicles pull up and either find the City units inoperable, or the owners struggling to get the units to simply operate. The contrast with the absolutely seamless charging provided by the Tesla Superchargers couldn't be clearer. I certainly understand the rationale back in 2021, for NOT choosing the proprietary Tesla connector for the units being procured, since the CCS and Chademo connectors were then still the international standards in use. Having said that, even back in 2021 Tesla had 50-70% overall share of the US market. Given this, and how rapidly the EV charging landscape was changing, deploying chargers that served only a minority of possible users should have had the City proceed with much caution. Perhaps the deployment of only 6 chargers at the Arroyo location was the "conservative" approach. In any case, the procurement process, installation, and subsequent inadequate maintenance resulted in essentially inoperable chargers.
Time has shown that the Tesla connector (and indeed the Superchargers themselves) were indeed the superior product, with the NACS standard being adopted by the US in December 2023, and auto makers now all switching to the NACS connector. Given all that has transpired over the last several years on the EV charging front, I would strongly urge the City Council and the procurement oversight committee to keep the past experiences in mind when choosing a new design-build team. While the bulleted criteria listed are all relevant, the most important ones are the first six, so that the end result is a functioning and future proof installation that is operable for many years.
Tesla recently rolled out the "Supercharger for business" program.
See https://www.tesla.com/supercharger-for-business. They offer a fult-service package that includes charger deployment, network operations, preventative maintenance and driver support, with a 97% guaranteed uptime. And as you may already know, Tesla also offers solar and BESS products so would obviously score high in the evaluation.
i 02/02/2026
ITEM 3
I strongly encourage you to include Testa in the RFP, and ensure that every effort is made to see if their program could comply with whatever procurement process is chosen. This would clearly deliver a seamless product, whereas choosing a different hardware vendor and/or maintainer could end up with a result more like the last set of chargers that were installed.
Robert Nowicki
2