The Long Beach City Council on Tuesday approved Mayor Robert Garcia’s request for the city to look into expanding its electric vehicle infrastructure, including offering more EV charging stations.

Currently, the city offers up to 55 public electric vehicle stations and follows the state’s Green Building Standards Code which mandates certain new family dwellings with attached parking garages to be EV capable, according to the agenda item presented at the council meeting Tuesday evening.

In addition, certain new Long Beach apartment complexes and nonresidential buildings must dedicate at a certain percent of total parking spaces as EV charging stations.

At the meeting Garcia suggested new infrastructure at beach and park lots and the possibility of increasing the percentage of EV charging stations mandated for new developments.

“There are a lot of opportunities still that the city can strengthen in our current electric vehicle policy,” Garcia said. “That ranges from strengthening our policy when it comes to private commercial lots and looking at retail lots that are being developed in new buildings.”

As part of the approval the city’s Sustainability Commission was directed to report back to the council with recommendations within four months.

“The infrastructure needs to be, quite frankly, dramatically improved across the city and across the county, and it’s time for us to take the lead on that,” Garcia said.