EV Charging Stations Coming to...A McDonalds Near You?

We've all heard the old, tired line before: environmentalism is an affectation of the rich; only latte-sipping liberals care about their carbon footprint; my personal favorite - urban planning is a socialist Obama conspiracy against the suburban neighborhoods where real, red-blooded Americans live.

Some of these pathetic arguments may be put to rest by one of the more surprising developments in EV charging infrastructure. They're installing EV stations at, you guessed it, the McDonalds near you. Specifically, two Level 2 charging stations are being installed at this McDonalds in Huntington, West Virginia.

You know electric vehicles like the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf (and Ford Focus electric, hitting the market in 2012) have arrived when any given McDonalds will have spots for drivers to plug in their vehicles.

McDonalds charging station in the Netherlands, courtesy of EVworld.com

If we can corner the fast food market with EV stations - that is, make them an easily integrated and functional part of our fast-food/strip-mall landscape - we just might have the shot in the arm needed to kick our addiction to fossil fuels.




Photo courtesy of The Happy Hospitalist

 The map of McDonald's locations across the US begs the question of "where isn't there a micky dees near me?" Could it one day lead to the same question about charging stations? Let's fucking hope so!
Via: CityFix

Five Reasons Electric Cars Could Fail in the US

With the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf set to take over very soon a small chunk of the new car market, it's worth asking whether we can expect this to be a brief fad (a la Delorean) or a lasting consumer trend. The Ford Focus electric is slated to be released next year, and the very same question could be asked of that model as well.

Clearly, many key stakeholders are heavily invested in making sure that electric vehicles are successfully launched as a mainstay of the US car market. General Electric has announced it will buy 25,000 EV's for its company fleet in 2015 as part of its long-term corporate strategy. A number that large can hardly be written off as mere environmental lip service. Nearly half of these vehicles are expected to be the Chevy Volt, due to its dual electric-hybrid engine that is not fully dependent on an electric charge.

The City of Houston, Texas, long a bastion of the oil industry and its defenders, will be the first city in the US to have a privately-funded electric vehicle charging network. By the end of next year, Houston is expected to have between 50 and 150 charging stations throughout the city, operated by NRG Energy. The chargers will be Level 2 and 3, meaning that vehicles can be fully charged in as little as a half-hour, surpassing a major stumbling block of Level 1 "electric highway" efforts we have seen in California and Washington. Talks are underway to even expand the network into San Antonio and Austin. It may be the most ironic development yet if Texas, and not liberal California or New York, were to be the most EV-prepared state in the country.

Despite these positive developments, there are several reasons to question whether EVs really are here to stay or are just a passing trend.

Here's five reasons from The Infrastructurist for why EV's are not ready to take off in America:

1. Money

The Leaf has a sticker price of $32,780, and the Volt starts even higher, at $41,000. Of course those numbers go down $7,500 with a federal subsidy (or, as George Will puts it, “bribe”) on EV purchases. But that’s still a lot to ask for cars whose similarly sized competitors ask less than twenty grand. Complicating the picture is that gas prices are (somewhat) stable at the moment—and it sure doesn’t look like the gas tax will go up either.

2. Time

For most people, buying a plug-in also means buying a new plug. That’s because achieving a full charge with standard 120-volt sockets found in most homes will take 20 hours — clearly too long to make the morning commute. Upgrading to a 240-volt charger will cut that time to roughly 8 hours, or a typical night at home. But that can run you another two grand. There’s currently a federal subsidy for these, too, but it’s set to expire December 31, and Congress may not renew it. (And, if we did all buy EVs and charge them at once, apparently the power grid would totally fail.)

3. Range Anxiety

Far and away the biggest concern of potential electric buyers is range anxiety, or the fear of running out of power far from home. Public charging stations are few and far between at present. While people commute less than 40 miles to work on average—well within the range of most electrics—the distance one can travel in a fully charged EV varies based on factors like speed, road conditions, and air conditioning or heat use. In three typical scenarios, Popular Mechanics recently found that the Volt goes only on an average of 33 miles on its electricity (before switching over to an auxiliary gasoline engine).

4. Misinformation

Part of the fear of range anxiety stems from misinformation: A recent survey by the Electric Power Research Institutefound that 38% of people believe the maximum range of battery electrics to be 50 miles, when in fact it’s often double. The same survey found that 35% of people consider electrics “less reliable” and 20%  consider them less safe than gasoline cars — “misperceptions,” says environmental writer Jim Motavalli, that “are definitely going to color your attitude toward EVs.”

5. Man’s Inexorable Reluctance to Change

One leading authority, when asked about the future of automobiles, said that the limitations of battery power simply make gasoline motors “more promising.” That was Thomas Edison, speaking to the New York World in 1895. Although electric cars have been discussed since Edison’s day (some early American car manufacturers even preferred them), the gasoline engine won out, and its position has only grown stronger over time. Today EVs must fight not only battery power but also a deeply ingrained national habit. As the manger of electrics for BMW North America recently told USA Today, when it comes to electric cars, people “need a little more convincing.”

 Via: The Infrastructurist, Inhabitat

SF Bay Area to Build the Nation's First Electric Vehicle Charging Network

Electric vehicles have been identified as a crucial technology for reducing the carbon footprint of our nation's fleets, above all because they produce no greenhouse gas emissions.

Evergreen Fleets has defined electric vehicles as the preferred option for "neighborhood vehicles" (NEVs) designed for short trips in their Best Practices section, due to the current market shortage of vehicles capable of traveling on freeways. This market shortage is poised to dramatically change in the coming months, as the Nissan Leaf (fully electric) and the Chevy Volt (plug-in hybrid-electric) are introduced as affordable, freeway-capable models.

However, even when new plug-in hybrid and fully electric models are introduced to the market, the question of the availability of an adequate charging infrastructure remains.

According to a recent EPA study, the Chevy Volt would only achieve a fuel efficiency of 48 miles per gallon, assuming its electric battery has been fully charged. The fully-electric battery has a range of 40 miles, after which a gas-electric generator kicks in for the remaining 300 miles until the vehicle needs to be refueled. While the vehicle is in its fully electric mode, its fuel efficiency approaches 100 miles per gallon.  After the initial 40 mile range of fully electric power, the vehicle's efficiency drops dramatically, bringing its aggregate fuel efficiency to the figure of 48 m.p.g. cited above. While the 40-mile range of fully-electric power covers the average commuting distance for over 75% of Americans, to be truly practical, an inter-metropolitan network of electric charging stations outside of the home must be created to facilitate this vehicle's optimal fuel efficiency range.

This is even more  true of the Nissan Leaf, whose fully electric range is only 100 miles and lacks a gas-electric powertrain - when the Leaf runs out of electric charge, the driver has no choice but to pull over and search for the nearest charging station. An 8 hour charge is needed for the Leaf, suggesting that to be truly effective and convenient for drivers it must be charged periodically throughout the day.

A Bay Area venture capital firm, Better Place, in November 2008 committed to a $1 billion investment for the first electric vehicle charging network in the United States. The Mayors of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose each threw their support behind the network partnership. The network is anticipated to become operational in 2012.

In response to the regional plans for this electric vehicle charging network, the City of San Francisco recently announced a change to its building code that would require new buildings to have an outlet for charging electric vehicles. As a New York Times article pointed out, there is serious concern among public utilities that the rapidly expanding demand for electricity due to the charging of electric vehicles could overwhelm local electric grids if vehicles like the Nissan Leaf become widely popular. City officials anticipate having 60 charging stations operational within San Francisco by the end of 2010 and more than 1,000 throughout the Bay Area by 2011. In addition to venture capital funding, large portions of this network will be funded by a $200 million subsidy from Obama's stimulus package.

Two key concerns over the introduction of this electric vehicle charging grid are 1) the true reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, which depend on the electricity's source and 2) the popularity of electric vehicles in regions outside of the relatively wealthy Bay Area (a 240watt home charging kit for an electric vehicle can run up to $1,500).