Yes, you read that right.  The city in America’s conservative heartland is about to take the initiative on public charging installations for electric vehicles:

Over the next several months, Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) will install more than 1,000 charging sites in the greater Kansas City area. It’s the largest such installation by an electric utility in the U.S. to date, it says.

Called the Clean Charge Network, it will offer free 240-volt Level 2 and DC fast charging to electric-car drivers for the first two years of operations. The network will include 15 fast-charging stations provided by Nissan.

They are reportedly “combination” units that charge that can recharge an electric car using either the CHAdeMO standard (found largely in the Nissan Leaf) and the Combined Charge Standard (CCS) that is supported by all U.S. and German automakers.

The rest of the network will consist of Level 2 stations built and maintained by ChargePoint. All of the charging locations will be part of its national network of charging stations.

I’ve said it before, but it’s about time California let electric utilities take on some of this infrastructure deployment. Private companies, with the exception of Tesla and its Supercharger network, are not getting the job done at a sufficient rate.  At least in this one policy area, I hope California takes its cue (or ‘cue?) from Kansas City.