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

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

A Special Shout-out to Plug-In Olympia

I just wanted to reach out to Plug-In Olympia and thank them for posting the I-5 electric highway article on their blog list. It's great to see that my blog is helping others in Washington State spread the word about electric vehicles and sustainability in general.

A quick bit about Plug-In Olympia:

Plug-In Olympia’s Mission:

To educate individuals and businesses, within the State of Washington and especially Thurston County, regarding the need to encourage usage of electric vehicles and thereby promote sustainability;

To encourage installation of electric vehicle plug-in outlets by businesses, cities, State and public agencies for their customers and employees;

To maintain a reference list of these plug-in locations.

Essentially, a ground-level beacon of information source on and advocate for EV infrastructure in Washington, Plug-In Olympia, I salute you!

I took a quick spin through their blog roll and found this gem that ranks EV preparedness among 50 cities in the US - unfortunately subscription is required to see the full article:

Cities counted among the Leaders include: Austin, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Raleigh, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose and SEATTLE.

Click here to view the full report's methodology of ranking the cities.

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

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

America's First "Electric Highway" Takes Shape Along Highway 101 in California

Commuters between San Francisco and Los Angeles, along Highway 101, will no longer have to worry about the lack of electric vehicle charging infrastructure along this key California artery. 


While innovators like Shai Agassi of Better Place are still testing large-scale electric charging networks in a few prototype locations, Solar City, a Foster City, CA startup, has already created approximately 2,500 charging stations across the US, five of which are arrayed along the famously picturesque Highway 101, in what is now being dubbed "the Electric Highway." 

According to a story on the green technology blog Inhabitat, SolarCity's charging stations along Highway 101 are each located at Rabobank locations, one of their key patrons. Part of the reason Solar City's efforts have not garnered more public attention is because their stations, for the moment, are only compatible with the Tesla Roadster. The Roadster is a gorgeous driving machine whose starting price tops $100,000, making it in many ways a status symbol of the environmentally-conscious elite. The charging stations also have limited practicality, taking up to 3 hours to fully charge up a Roadster, though thankfully for Roadster owners, the vehicle's battery has a 300-mile range, meaning that intermittent stops along the Electric Highway need not be anywhere near three hours long. 

Three of the five charging stations - the Salinas, Atascadero, and San Luis Obispo locations - along the Electric Highway are solar-powered, offering a challenge to up-and-coming charging station providers to ensure, for publicity's sake, that their stations draw their electric energy from renewable sources. Currently Solar City has been offering its charging station services for free, although that may change as soon as it adopts a universal electric plug that any electric vehicle can use. As soon as that becomes a reality, the idea of "electric highways" and "green commuting corridors" may become the new status quo of transportation planning.