London Soon To Have More EV Chargers than Gas Stations

According to a recent story from Inhabitat, London may soon have more EV charging stations than conventional gas stations.

As of fall 2010, London had 250 charging stations for about 2,000 electric vehicles registered in the city.

The new EV charging network, called Source London, announced in May 2011 that 1,300 EV charging stations will be installed in the city by 2013. These new stations will be installed along residential streets as well as near supermarkets, public parking garages, and shopping malls.

The real questions here are 1) does London truly need 1,300 EV charging stations?; and 2) will this new public investment help supplant San Francisco's role as the global leader in EV charging infrastructure?

Source London will pay for the maintenance of the new charging stations by having EV drivers subscribe to an annual membership fee of about $160. There's no such thing as a free lunch, I guess...turns out you still have to pay to fill up your car even if by electric charge.

EV drivers shouldn't complain too much, however. Per Mayor Boris Johnson, they are exempt from the city's congestion charge of between $8 and $15 to enter the city during rush hour.

What is truly groundbreaking about Source London is that with 1,300 charging stations in the city limits, drivers will be far more likely to encounter an electric charge point than a conventional gas station. This could have long-lasting implications on driver behavior, as one of the biggest flaws of electric vehicles - so-called "range anxiety" over where and when to recharge the batteries - will have been eliminated, at least for London residential drivers.

A link to an interactive map of London charging stations is available here.

Whether electric charging stations become viable infrastructure for cab drivers, service vehicles, and delivery trucks - all of which demand a battery range of greater than 100 miles to be practical - remains to be seen.

Will Microsoft Be the Google of EV Charging Stations?

Cellphone apps and other corporate tech partnerships are quickly filling the void of governments to provide information to the public about where to find an EV charging station. In an industry so heavily subsidized by the feds (you can get a $7,500 rebate for buying just about any EV model on the market), you would think the associated infrastructure for cars would get attention from the public sector.

However, if you take a look at the recent budget cuts that were approved in Washington DC several weeks ago, it's becoming clear that projects dependent on federal funding for green projects - this runs the gamut from high-speed rail, electric vehicles, public transit, and other sustainable urban planning methods - are facing a grim future.

The highlights from the impending doom scenario?

• $34 million cut from the Renewable Energy Program (Agriculture)
• $80 million gone from the Environmental Quality Incentives program (Agriculture)
• about $900 million cut from FEMA - God help us if when we see another hurricane like Katrina (Homeland Security)
• $50 million from Climate Change programs (Interior)
• $25 million from FTA Energy Efficiency Grants (Transportation) that funded much of California's EV charging infrastructure

And....the big ticket items:

• $2.9 billion eliminated from high-speed rail (HSR) funding, before even a single mile of it has been built in the US! The "flagship" line under construction between LA and SF might well be the only one at this rate. This comes as many of the more idiotic Red States are having the gaul to reject HSR funding and return it to the feds! No thanks, Obama :) You can take your cutting-edge infrastructure and thousands of construction jobs, because WE DON'T NEED THEM! Is it just me, or do Republicans have a near-perfect record of laying waste to the projects big cities need for their economic survival?
• $3 billion gone from highway construction - part of these cuts make sense, there is definitely a solid argument that highways encourage poorly-planned, sprawling development patterns. But do Republicans hate both trains and highways, or just hate any kind of movement in general??? I just don't get it.
• $600 million gone from public housing programs like HOPE VI and Section 8

And things looked so good for environmental projects back in 2009 when Obama passed the ARRA. So this is the funding void we're dealing with for EV infrastructure.

Thankfully, big corporations like Microsoft and Google are seeing the tremendous opportunity that investing in EV infrastructure holds.

The database is called the Microsoft Utility Rate Service (MURS), and it will be available via subscription to government agencies, power providers, auto makers, and electric vehicle charging equipment companies. It will allow consumers to search the full range of EV charging utilities to find the best deal on charging electricity nearest them.

More info from the Inhabitat story:

According to Warren Dent, director of business development at Microsoft, MURS will be offered in at least 17 different markets — mostly on the East Coast and West Coast — but also including cities like Detroit, Denver, and Chicago.

To get going, Microsoft is collaborating with one-to-three utilities in each region to get access to the data, and is expecting that its partnerships with companies like Duke Energy, Xcel Energy, and Portland General Electric will provide it with more relevant information. The pricing information will then be sent from the utility companies to Microsoft, which will relay that information to MURS subscribers. MURS sends the data directly to the plug-in vehicle, eliminating the need for interaction with drivers.

Currently, Ford is utilizing on Microsoft’s service to allow its drivers to charge their cars when utility rates are lowest.

Hmm....so kind of like a Craigslist for where to plug in your EV batteries? Hopefully this will level the playing field as far as EV charging networks are concerned and allow more innovative companies enter the market and offer cheaper alternatives we can take advantage of. Microsoft may be a dinosaur among the high-tech world, but here its program sounds like a winner!


Via: Inhabitat 

Range Anxiety? There's An App for That

Mobile apps are coming to the rescue of EV charging networks that are seriously lacking in all but a few corridors in the US. "Range anxiety," or the fear that your car will run out of juice before you can recharge it at the charging station, is a major obstacle to overcome before electric vehicles become truly mainstream in the US auto market.

Not only does this free app list EV drivers near you who are willing to offer you a charge; it also has a comprehensive directory of all the public EV charging stations, so you are never again too far away to get your car charged. It will be interesting to see which how this app takes off - is it like a Craigslist for EV drivers, where strangers freely exchange services? Or is it more like FourSquare, where public "place listings" for EV charging stations help out drivers in need?



Via: GOOD

Ecotality's EV Project Gives Coulomb's ChargePoint a Run for Its Money

Last month I wrote about how Coulomb Technologies' ChargePoint America program plans to install 4,600 EV charging stations across nine metro areas in the next several years. So far, however, the EV stations have been geographically limited, especially in the Puget Sound area. Long story short, it's going to be hard to ease questions of "range anxiety" that many potential EV buyers will have if the only available ChargePoint stations are at Bellevue City Hall, UW Bothell, and a high-end condo building in Downtown Seattle (residents only). That's hardly the way to expand a network and create the necessary perception that plugging in your electric car will be as seamless and convenient as filling up at any gas station.

Luckily, that necessity breeds invention, and Ecotality's EV Project has filled in to give Coulomb's ChargePoint America program a real run for its money. The EV Project has a much larger budget, having landed a $99 million grant from the DOE - nearly three times the size of the grant awarded to ChargePoint.

The EV Project began in August 2009 and will be completed by the end of 2012 and takes a markedly different approach to the implementation of EV infrastructure than Coulomb. Rather than focusing on installing public charging stations, the EV Project is assisting customers who bought the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf by providing then with over 8,300 home charging systems. Not to be outdone in terms of public visibility, Ecotality is also installing 15,000 public charging stations. The project spans six states - WA, OR, CA, AZ, Tennessee (odd choice, although they've installed some of Ecotality's charging stations at the Cracker Barrel!), and DC.

Courtesy of The EV Project

Ecotality's EV Project also has the advantage of having major funding outside of the federal government. Swiss power grid corporation ABB just agreed to invest $10 million in the EV Project.

The bulk of the 15,000 plus residential and commercial charging stations will be primarily on the West Coast, as well as Texas and Tennessee. Just where will you be able to soon find your Ecotality charging station? One of the coolest things to come out of Ecotality's EV Project has been the official maps it has released showing station density in several cities.

OREGON

According to a September press release, Ecotality plans to install 1,100 charging stations in four Oregon cities: Portland, Euguene, Salem, and Corvallis. The stations seem to be logically aligned along Portland's major arterials, like Burnside Street, Sandy Blvd, MLK, and the downtown core.

Map of Portland charging stations

WASHINGTON

The EV Project plans to install 1,200 charging stations in Washington State, which will be a great complement to plans already underway to create an electric highway on I-5. With the help of planners at the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC), Ecotality has finally released a detailed map of charging station density in the Seattle area.

Via: GigaOMElectric Vehicles

Taxis of the Future Soon to Hit New York Streets

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission has announced the three finalists for the vehicle they will choose to replace New York's aging taxi fleet. The winning cab will replace a large chunk of over 13,000 cabs that traverse the city. Whichever design is chosen will have a major impact on which green fleet technologies get adopted - New York has the largest taxi market in the US - and which don't.

These are the criteria that will determine the winning bid:

• Meets highest safety standards
• Superior passenger experience
• Superior driver comfort and amenities
• Appropriate purchase price and ongoing maintenance and repair costs
• Smaller environmental footprint (lower emissions and improved fuel economy)
• Smaller physical footprint (with more usable interior room)
• Compliance with appropriate Americans with Disabilities Act requirements
• Iconic design that will identify the new taxi with New York City

It will be especially interesting to see how the winning cab stacks up, in terms of fuel efficiency, with the city's current crop of hybrid-electric cabs, or Chicago's CNG (compressed natural gas) cabs that I wrote about here. This is to say nothing of San Francisco's Japanese-made all-electric cabs that received a huge federal grant earlier this year. 

Here are the finalists:

Turkish automaker Karsan's entry, the only cab that is wheelchair-accessible

Ford Transit Connect Taxi

Nissan's finalist


Via: Planetizen

Paris Starts All-Electric Car Sharing Service

We've all heard of Paris' famous bike-sharing program, Velib. It has become a model for many other citiesaround the world rolling out their bike share systems. With low-cost stations, mobile and credit-card payment systems, and a cost per bike of around $1,000, bike share systems seem relatively simple to run and maintain.

But what about a similar service that rented out electric cars in the same way? Like an all-electric, omnipresent version of Zipcar? Now we're talking about a bit more overhead.

Paris is about to launch the world's first all-electric car-sharing service with publicly accessible stations, called Autolib, modeled just like its successful Velib bike-share system. The program could be operational as soon as September of this year! More details from Inhabitat:

Here’s how it will work: cars will be stored both in parking garages and on the street as part of a public-private partnership between Autolib and the city of Paris. No word yet on how much the program will cost, but Autolib claims that it will be significantly lower than the approximately $7,000 per year that it costs to own a car in the city.

It should be interesting to see how Paris deals with the problem of theft, which has notoriously plagued the Velib bike-share system. An estimated 80% of the initial 8,000 bikes (valued at $3,500 each) were either stolen or damaged in the year 2009, according to The New York Times. Parisians are also known for lighting cars on fire when they get angsty, as well. Perhaps dousing the Autolib cars with flame-retardant finish would do the trick?

Then again, having the support of one French billionaire, to the tune of a $131 million initial investment, should help make sure the cars stay in good shape. Tycoon Vincent Bollore has dropped this change in return for supplying the Autolib system with its first model vehicle, the Pininfarina Bluecar, according to Autoblog Green. The car's lithium battery pack allows a range of 155 miles, roughly the distance you could feasibly drive doing a day's worth of only short jaunts across the city neighborhoods. You'd have to be crazy to want to do long-haul trips on an Autolib car...have you seen their traffic?



If the program launches successfully, this could do wonders for Paris' infrastructure, as well as its reputation as one of the world's greenest cities. They are even looking at banning SUV's and other gas guzzlers from their city center! Can you imagine a New York or San Francisco doing the same? That Paris is even considering measures like these is a testament to their commitment to multimodal transportation - bikes, subways, and above all, walking truly take precedence here. To get people out of their cars, you must first give them a valid choice - that is the lesson American cities are still learning.

Like congestion pricing, with its successful implementation in London, ideas tend to spread among the global cities first (to New York and then San Francisco) and then trickle down the urban hierarchy.

Which means that by 2030, Seattle will have completed three multi-million dollar studies, hired international consultants to review the studies and conclude they're garbage, submitted the proposal to public comment and town meetings, then put it to a vote and, after it's voted down by the public, finally discover that Seattle's more expensive housing and lack of parking is itself the most effective form of "congestion pricing". Oh, you wanted electric car-sharing, too? That can wait until the next election cycle. We're just masters of the process, now, aren't we?

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

Feds Give $184 Million to Green Vehicle Development

Another reason to thank the Obama Administration: there is more money available for green vehicle research than there has been in recent memory.

The Department of Energy is slated to dole out $184 million for green vehicle research, with specific focus in the areas of advanced materials, combustion research, hybrid electric systems, fleet efficiency, and fuels technology.

This announcement comes on the heels of the US release of the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf, two models that mark the first mass wave of commercially viable electric cars in the American market.

The deadline for proposals is Februrary 28, 2011, so there's still time to get your ideas into the running for federal cash!

For more info, check out the DOE's Vehicle Technologies Program, which is administering the grants.

ChargePoint Launches EV Charging Stations in Bellevue, WA and Washington, DC

One of the latest and most promising developments in EV charging station technology has been launched right here in the Seattle area!

ChargePoint America, a $37 million grant program run by Coulomb Technologies, has recently opened public charging stations in Bellevue, WA, as well as Washington DC. The program was funded in part from a $15 million Department of Energy grant from the ARRA stimulus package of 2009. Thank you, Obama!!!

The ultimate goal is to set up 4,600 stations across the country, in nine regions: Austin, Texas, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Fla., Sacramento, Calif., the San Jose/San Francisco Bay Area, Bellevue/Redmond, Wash., and Washington DC and is a strategic partnership between Coulomb and three leading automobile brands: Ford, Chevrolet and smart USA. If ChargePoint succeeds, maybe we won't be so apt to relegate such dinosaur status to our dying Detroit brands. 

Already ChargePoint has set up stations at the UW Bothell campus, Bainbridge Island, and the ultra-pricey Aspira condo building in Downtown Seattle (sadly, for Louis Vuitton-toting residents only). 

These latest two stations have been installed at the Bellevue City Hall and are open to the public. In order to promote ChargePoint stations for EV drivers in the Northwest, they established a sub-contractor, ChargeNW, where subscribers can get discounted home charging units and even find the nearest station on their Smartphone app. 

Via: Inhabitat

My Senior Thesis - The Real Deal!

Green My Fleet - An Analysis of Puget Sound Clean Air's

View more documents from dperl88.

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

EV Charging Stations Go Wireless!

One of the biggest developments to come out of the world of electric vehicle charging station technology is a new crop of wireless charging systems soon to hit the market.

If a new partnership between Delphi Automotive and WiTricity works out, electric vehicle owners may soon be able to charge their cars simply by pulling up to a parking spot.

Whereas most EV charging stations to date have involved plug-in technology, this new system involves no cables or cords; it’s embedded in a parking lot or placed on a parking garage floor, and after drivers park over the system it transmits energy wirelessly to their vehicle to charge it.

According to the designers at WiTricity, the wireless charging stations can transfer 3,000 watts through to the parked vehicles above them, about the same as a plug-in charging station. 

A startup in London, HaloIPT, has already launched successfully in the UK a similar wireless charging station that is suitable for all vehicles - including scooters, electric cars, and electric bikes. 

Known as the Inductive Power Transfer System, allows a car fitted with a simple integrated receiver pad to be charged automatically when parked or driven on roads with HaloIPT’s special charging pads beneath their surface. This IPT method could give new meaning to the phrase "electric highway" by enabling charging technology to be directly embedded into the roads we drive on.

Via: Inhabitat, Autoblog Green

Electric highway soon to be a reality on the I-5 Corridor, but will we like it?

Electric cars are certain to remain a green novelty/luxury item if there isn't a readily accessible network of charging stations to refuel them. On the other hand, no government will be willing to make the massive infrastructure investments needed to make charging stations as ubiquitous as the corner store if they believe no one will buy electric cars. Is it the chicken or the egg?

This is the dilemma that planners are facing as they develop an electric highway of 15 charging stations along I-5 in Washington State. Two charging stations will be located at either end of the Washington State border, including the highly-trafficked US-Canada crossing at Blaine.

The chargers will take 15-30 minutes for a complete charge and will be located on the private property of a for-profit business, replicating the experience of driving into any gas station - food, drinks, shopping, and car servicing could be part of the package.

The project is administered by WSDOT and a $1.3 million US Dept of Energy grant, and is part of the West Coast Green Highway program that one day hopes to extend from Canada to Mexico along I-5. Washington could become a springboard for other, more advanced EV infrastructure if this initial spur - the first of the WCGH - is a success. Not slow to follow suit, the State of Oregon has recently secured a $2 million federal TIGER II grant to do a project of the same scale within its borders. 

Unfortunately, the program is far from a complete solution to the problem of lack of EV infrastructure. 

There are currently no plans to create any EV options for East-West highway traffic. So any EV drivers attempting to Seattle from Spokane or Idaho (which has exactly zero charging stations in the entire state) would be shit outta luck. 

Hawaii was originally conceived as the poster child for EV infrastructural success, as it is an island where no single car trips could possibly exceed the battery range of the vehicle. However, news coming out of Hawaii after four EV charging stations were installed there is hardly encouraging:

To date, four public charging stations have opened in Hawaii. “It's pretty sad,” Leone said. “Nobody wants to install them because the cars aren't here, and people are reluctant to buy the cars because the infrastructure isn't there yet.”

San Francisco-based Better Place's revolutionary battery-swapping technology was briefly considered as a solution to the impediment of having to wait 15-30 minutes for a full battery charge. However, WSDOT turned this option down, allegedly due to problems with the standardization of battery models in the more popular EVs on the market today: the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, and electric Ford Focus.

According to the project manager,

“In theory, it seems like a good idea, and it might work” in countries smaller than the United States, such Israel and Denmark, where swapping programs are in fact underway and technologies are more homogeneous. "

Until these technical issues are resolved, it may be that the I-5 electric highway will end up being about as useful as the Seattle Center monorail or the South Lake Union Trolley (SLUT) - expensive, privately-financed toys that are flashy, high-tech, and contribute about zero to getting us out of our gas-guzzlers.

For more info, be sure to check out updates from the West Coast Green Highway project.

Via: Crosscut

SF Taxi Cabs the First Wave of EV Revolution in the Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area has been at the forefront of the electric vehicle (EV) innovation wave that has gotten major venture capitalists involved on an unprecedented scale. Back in May, I wrote about the SF-based firm Better Place and their (well-funded) project to bring $1.4 billion of investment to create a neighborhood level electric charging station network state-wide. There's also an established "electric highway" of EV charging stations on Hwy. 101 designed to service exclusively the Tesla Roadster, however limited that project may be in scope.

One of the first, and most highly visible, manifestations of the EV revolution in San Francisco will come in the form of a fully-electric fleet of taxi cabs throughout the city, funded by the US Dept. of Transportation. Over the next three years, four battery charging stations will be placed across the city. These stations will swap the taxi's batteries in as little as 45 seconds. To be practical for wide application, the charging stations must be efficient and lightning-quick; no taxi cab company in its right mind would let its vehicles sit idle for hours charging under the dominant EV charger technology in place in most cities today.

The project is a replication of an earlier system Better Place executed in Tokyo, using one of that megacity's largest taxi cab companies, Nihon Kotsu. The taxicabs in that experimental project drove over 25,000 miles using fully electric power from the Better Place charging stations.

This remarkable project implementation from Better Place is just one more reason why Inhabitat calls San Francisco "set to lead the electric vehicle revolution."

Via: Inhabitat

Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Making Headway in Europe

Yet another great development in building a solid infrastructure of electric vehicle charging stations! Dutch high-tech firm Epyon has developed a series of very commercially viable charging station for electric vehicles. While this is hardly the first such network of charging stations in Europe, it is one of the fastest and most user-friendly models we have seen.

According to Green Car Advisor, Epyon's stations are capable of fully charging the 9-person taxi-vans of Taxi Kijlstra, one of the largest taxi companies in the Netherlands, in only 30 minutes. Thereafter, the taxis can drive up to 100 miles before having to recharge again. A single Epyon EV charger can charge multiple vehicles at once, unique among the EV charging stations we have seen so far. Only further investment in electric vehicle charging networks (funding more stations) will create an environment in which the 100-mile limit of the electric charges is not such a hurdle for fleets and their drivers.

Via: Edmunds.com

New Partnership between Toyota and Tesla Motors to Catalyze the Electric Car Market in the US

According to a recent report from Reuters, Toyota has purchased a $50 million share in Tesla Motors, a move that not only will help Toyota improve its damaged reputation following a series of product recalls in late 2009 but will also help to catalyze the development of the American electric car market. The $50 million share is estimated to be 2.5% of Tesla's net worth, although this figure cannot be confirmed until Tesla goes public later this year.

As I have described earlier, some enormous barrier to the development of electric car market-share have been the lack of supporting infrastructure in the built environment, as well as a lack of government and major corporate support for green car development.

Toyota's partnership with Tesla dovetails with important developments in electric car innovation. One of the most significant has been the venture capital investment of Shai Agassi's Better Place in a network of electric vehicle charging stations in California and Hawaii. A second has been the "Electric Highway" already developed for Tesla vehicles along California's Highway 101.

In addition, President Obama's recent executive order to improve the fuel efficiency of America's car fleet by raising the CAFE standards to a combined 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, according to a New York Times article published 5/21/10, will provide a legislative impetus for green car infrastructure that can meet the new federal standards.

Specifically, this exciting new partnership between Toyota and Tesla Motors will take place at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc’ (aka Nummi) in Fremont, CA — a recently shuttered GM/Toyota auto plant which will re-open under the Tesla/Toyota partnership to produce the Model S sedans, according to Inhabitat.  The Model S sedans have received federal tax exemptions, as the Department of Energy has encouraged green car development as part of the 2009 stimulus package (ARRA). The Model S is slated to have a range of 300 miles (after a 45 minute charge) and cost $49,900 after tax rebates when they are released in 2012. Tesla has the added benefit of a $465 million federal loan to build this lower-cost electric model.

This partnership will allow for a creative synergy between the two companies - with the major market share and production capacity of Toyota and the innovative expertise of Tesla - that could eventually lead Toyota to outpace Chevrolet and Nissan, whose electric models, the Volt and Leaf, respectively, are slated for release in Fall 2010. In addition, the re-opening of the Nummi plant in California will greatly contribute to the regional economy and produce an estimated 1,000 jobs.

Via: Inhabitat

Pay Phones as EV Charging Stations...What???

Think back to the last time you personally used a pay phone. Was it five years ago? Ten? In modern American society where cellphones and blackberries are ubiquitous, pay phones are as anachronistic as coal-fired furnaces and "ice boxes." The only people we associate with using pay phones regularly are those on the margins of society - sex workers, drug dealers, and the homeless who have no other option.

So one question arises: what do we do with all of those phone booths (that used to be in every public space) that we suddenly no longer need?

Luckily, one telecommunications firm in Austria, Telekom Austria, has successfully developed an innovative prototype that can transform old pay phone booths into functional electric vehicle charging stations for cars, bikes, and scooters. Telekom Austria hopes to convert 29 phone booths  (out of that country's 13,500 booths) into EV charging stations by the end of 2010. It takes about 6.5 hours to recharge an electric car, 80 minutes to juice a scooter and only 20 minutes to charge an electric bicycle. Though today the company says there will be no fees for using its phone booth EV charging stations, Telekom Austria eventually hopes to charge a small user fee, payable by credit card or mobile phone, as it becomes more established.

Today Austria only has 223 registered electric vehicles, along with some 3,500 hybrids on its records. However, the Austrian motor vehicle association, VOeC, says that it expects the country to contain about 405,000 electric vehicles by the year 2020, which is when Telekom Austria’s innovation will be ideally poised to take off and become an established part of our infrastructure.

Via Inhabitat  and Physorg

Solar-Powered Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Taking Off

Electric vehicles have long been an environmentalist's holy grail - they are clean, produce no emissions, futuristic, and are generally silent. Numerous environmental activists, from Elizabeth Kolbert to Al Gore to Jeremy Rifkin, have advocated a total manufacturing shift to producing electric and fuel-cell vehicles as a means of cutting our total emissions and protecting against global warming.


However, the source of these vehicle's electricity is rarely considered, despite its enormous weight on the overall carbon footprint of implementing any viable electric vehicles charging grid. Conventional fossil fuel sources, logically, have a much greater carboon footprint than renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar, or geothermal. Unfortunately, more than 70% of the electricity generated in the United States comes from fossil fuel sources, including coal (48%), natural gas (21%), and petroleum (1%). Nuclear energy (19%) and hydropower (6%) are less harmful to the environment but still carry significant local impacts. Truly "renewable" sources of energy account for just 3% of our generated electricity, according to the US Department of Energy. 

Several startup firms have taken that message seriously and have made major steps to create networks of electric vehicle charging stations that are truly carbon-neutral.


The E-Move Charging Station prototype, designed in Bozen, Denmark, by Valentin Runggaldier, charges vehicles through solar energy absorbed by eight solar panels on its roof. According to Inhabitat, 

"no word on how long the filling stations require to charge different devices, but unless people have the capacity to wait all day while a plug-in car is charged, the stations might be best suited for smaller devices."

The City of Chicago's Fleet Department used the ChargePoint technology created by Coulomb Technologies and adapted it to use solar power. By independently creating its own power source, the solar powered charging station does not draw upon the rest of the city's electric grid and does not cost the Fleet Department's electric bill. The only obstacle for wider adaptation of this type of solar-power charging station is the cost, which must be below what it would cost to use conventional electric sources to be practical. 

New York City just opened its first ever solar-power charging station within the last six months, through a partnership with the sustainable energy company Beautiful Earth Group.

In order to promote more of this type of synergy between the solar energy and electric vehicle sectors, certification regimes like Evergreen Fleets play a crucial role in promoting renewable-based electric grids over conventional ones.

New Commitments to Electric Vehicle Charging Networks

Municipal and private fleets may have more reason to investigate electric vehicles soon to arrive on commercial markets, thanks in large part to new agreements in several key regions to build vast networks of charging stations for electric vehicles.

Israel, home to the electric charging station empresario Shai Agassi, has already built several hundred charging stations capable of swapping the lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles in as little as 45 seconds. The batteries are expected to have a life of 7,000 charges, far more than the 150,000 miles of an average car's lifespan.

The State of Hawaii has also committed to officially endorsing Mr. Agassi's first round of electric charging stations.

Both Israel and Hawaii, as well as other demonstrations in Denmark, demonstrate how the network of charging stations could be ideal for communities with shorter vehicle trips and high gas prices. On Hawaii, for instance, drivers rarely make trips than 100 miles, due to the islands' confining geography. The one characteristic these areas share in common is that they are each considered "island economies" with above average energy prices, making them ideal testing grounds for electric vehicles. Once these charging station networks become established locally and increase their market share, the supply of charging stations will have increased sufficiently to become more affordable for larger regions with lower energy prices.

For fleets looking to reduce the environmental impacts, regardless of where they are located, the "island economy" narrative is a fitting metaphor. Fleets are, due to their size (for larger cities, many thousands of vehicles) have a disproportionate influence on local commercial vehicle markets. If large fleets were able to commit to significant number of these electric fueling stations, they could easily create an economy of scale, reducing the overall price and making the purchase of these stations more affordable for private consumers.

This "island economy" approach is a contrast to Evergreen Fleets' Best Practices, which tend to focus on purchasing and retrofitting existing vehicles. Often this approach leads to the manufacture of new vehicles or equipment, which adds to the fleet's overall carbon footprint yet is not calculated against the fleets as an environmental externality in Evergreen Fleets certification. A new focus on green vehicle infrastructure over vehicle purchasing, as Agassi's partnerships demonstrate, may be a more effective method for making electric vehicles widely practical and available, thereby reducing fleet emissions.

SF Bay's Electric Vehicle Charging Network Receives a Huge Dose of Funding

According to a recent New York Times article, the San Francisco-based venture capital firm Better Place has committed an additional $350 million to research and development for its network of charging stations for electric vehicles, such as the network under development for the Bay Area. This new investment brings Better Place's total investment in the charging station networks to nearly $1.4 billion, in addition to $200 million in federal stimulus funding earmarked specifically for California. Of this amount, $700 million has already been allocated. This funding will complete research and development on project sites in Israel and Denmark, where the Better Place charging stations are scheduled to become publicly available in early 2011. 


The Israeli-born entrepreneur and chief executive of Better Place, Shai Agassi, has framed his massive investment in the Bay Area charging network in terms of innovation and economic competitiveness:

“We’ve demonstrated that our network is deployable,” Mr. Agassi said. “We’re ready for a big breakthrough, and there is not one country that doesn’t need to get off oil.”

Often compared to early efforts by Google and Microsoft to change the world of personal computing, Better Place faces major operational hurdles to enacting its electric charging networks, most especially in the heavily auto-oriented United States. If Agassi's investments in California and other innovative regions are successful, 

"consumers would buy electric vehicles made by the big automakers but get the batteries from Better Place and pay a fee according to the distance they drive. The blueprint calls for thousands of conventional charge points, as well as switching stations where a robotic device could replace a battery in less time than it takes to fill a tank of gas. These stations are needed because batteries have a range of only about 100 miles...and recharging takes up to five hours. Changing batteries en route would make long journeys more convenient."

Major questions still remain about the source of the vehicle charging networks' electricity. If the source is a renewable fuel, such as solar, hydropower, or wind energy, the charging network has great potential for reducing the carbon emissions from personal vehicle use. However, if the source is a conventional fossil fuel, as is more likely in most countries, the net carbon savings of these electric vehicles - regardless of how commercially popular they may become - could be negligible. Furthermore, the lithium ion batteries powering new models like the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt themselves have large carbon footprints involved in the mining and manufacture of their components. The impacts of these supply chain processes is still in need of intensive investigation.