Electric Car Infrastructure Trials: Some Progress, Long Road Ahead

May 26, 2009 at 11:47 am

(Source: earth2tech via Reuters)

Cities have thrown down the gauntlet for electric car charging in recent months, and utilities are increasingly eager to tout infrastructure efforts. Among automakers, the Renault-Nissan Alliance has been out in front working to coordinate governments, utilities and charge station companies to develop regional networks of hardware and services that drivers will need to make the automakers’ upcoming electric cars practical for daily use. But what steps follow a big partnership announcement, after a utility, a vendor or an automaker says it’s done a deal to ready the power grid for an EV rollout?

For at least one of the 26 partners that the Renault-Nissan Alliance has lined up so far — utility San Diego Gas & Electric — the vision for how to support plug-in vehicles at even a pilot scale is just beginning to take shape. In an interview last week, SDG&E’s Clean Transportation manager, Bill Zobel, gave us a glimpse of what the utility has accomplished so far, and what it has in the works.

At this point, Zobel said, the company is still in the process of assembling its internal team for the project. When that group is fully established next month, it will help develop milestones and oversee outreach to customers and “integration across the broader utility.” By September, SDG&E aims to have commitments from fleet operators in the San Diego area to trial at least 100 electric cars coming from Nissan next year. Zobel said the University of California, San Diego is “ecstatic” about the program. The city and county of San Diego, several nearby cities and the U.S. military may also sign up to try the vehicles. SDG&E plans to have at least 15 of the cars in its own fleet.

SDG&E has requested stimulus funds from both the state of California and the federal government (Zobel wouldn’t tell us how much) to help it expand the project more quickly than it might without the funds.   

For the long term, SDG&E is thinking about how to educate EV buyers about “circuitry, wiring and permitting requirements,” and other aspects of EV ownership. Typically when you buy a car now, Zobel said, “there’s instant gratification.” Put your money down, and you have a vehicle that you can refuel at any gas station. Pretty soon, however, the utility, car dealers, the local government and drivers will need to “understand the requirements for an owner walking off the lot with a plug-in car.” When electric cars hit California in the 1990s with GM’s now famously “killed” EV1, that understanding was missing, Zobel said. “We’ll be much more prepared than we were last time.”

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Green:Net 2009 conference panel outlines the major obstacles for an Eletric Vehicle future

March 25, 2009 at 4:08 pm

(Source:  Tree Hugger

A panel of the big names in electric car infrastructure held a panel at Green:Net. Better Place, Google, Coulomb Technologies, and GridPoint were all present. One issue discussed was the challenges facing electric vehicles. Check out the video below to hear the biggest challenges standing in the way of us and our EVs.

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