(Source: Good)

Houston, Texas, may end up being the first American city with a great electric car charging infrastructure. NRG Energy is rolling out what is supposedly the world’s first privately funded comprehensive electric vehicle ecosystem. Here are some interesting nuggets:

• The system (or “ecosystem,” in their overwrought marketing speak), called eVgo, employs a very interesting business model. Subscribers sign a three-year contract and then pay a monthly fee, ranging from $49 to $89, for both a home charger and varying levels of access to this network of public chargers.
• NRG plans to install between 50 and 150 high-speed chargers in public places— shopping centers and the like—by the end of 2011. They’ll also be installing chargers in people’s homes.
• The high-speed chargers distributed around the city can charge a car to 80 percent  within 30 minutes.

Click here to read more.

Related articles

• NRG Installs Privately-Funded Electric Car Charging Network in Oily Houston (fastcompany.com)
• NRG Launches Nation’s First Privately Funded, Comprehensive Electric Vehicle Charging Ecosystem (eon.businesswire.com)
• NRG Energy Selects AeroVironment to Build the Nation’s First Privately-Funded Electric Vehicle Charging “Ecosystem” (eon.businesswire.com)
• Walgreens and NRG Energy Work Together to Bring Nation’s First Privately Funded, Comprehensive Electric Vehicle Infrastructure to Houston (eon.businesswire.com)
• Reliant Customers Among the First with Access to eVgo Electric Vehicle Charging Network (eon.businesswire.com)
• NRG Energy Launches Network Of Electric Car Chargers, In Houston (blogs.forbes.com)
• A Private Network for Recharging Cars (green.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Why Texas May Be a Better Electric Car State Than California (nytimes.com)
• “Unlimited Juice” Electric Vehicle Charging Plans: Good Idea or Exploitation? (allcarselectric.com)
• NRG: Nation’s First Privately Financed Vehicle Charging Network (gigaom.com)
• On the GreenBeat: Trilliant Inks Deal With British Gas, NRG Energy Launches Charging Infrastructure (nytimes.com)

(Source: via HuffingtonPost)

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(Source:  Time)

Q’Orianka Kilcher has never pumped a gallon of gasoline into her car. Never. Then again, she’s never owned a car that needed gasoline. You could say she is at ground zero of the ZE, or zero-emission, vehicle future.

A 19-year-old actress living in Santa Monica, Calif. (she played Pocahontas in the 2005 movie The New World), Q’Orianka (pronounced Quor-ee-anka) is on her second hydrogen-fuel-cell car, a Honda FCX Clarity, a four-door with a 200-mile range. “I don’t think I will ever buy a gas car,” she says. “I can go everywhere I want to go with this. Plus, it’s a guy magnet.”

Auto-marketing gurus take note: the brave new world of ZE cars is here, ready or not, and please make them sexy.

“ZEs are an entirely different paradigm,” says Stephen Ellis, manager of fuel-cell-vehicle marketing for American Honda Motor Co. in Torrance, Calif. Ellis manages the rare $600-a-month leases (including free hydrogen fill-ups) for the FCX Clarity. “Knowing how to integrate these new technologies into existing lifestyles and then building new infrastructures to make it work is the trick,” says Ellis. “It took a hundred years to create the gasoline infrastructure; this will be much faster.”

There are three types of zero, or near zero, emission cars: electric plug-ins, hybrid plug-ins and hydrogen fuel cells (which create power by having oxygen and hydrogen pass over electricity-generating electrodes). But each major automaker has its own take on which advanced technology will win 10 years down the road.

Nissan, for example, is pedal-to-the-metal with pure electric cars, having skipped fuel-cell technology altogether. It considers “interim hybrid technology,” like Toyota’s successful Prius, a mere passing phase. “The market-share winner will be the one that offers affordable, mass-market, zero-emission vehicles with a zero payback period for premium technologies,” says Mark Perry, director of the product planning and strategy group for Nissan North America.

In contrast to Nissan, Honda has passed up pure electrics, preferring instead to bank on lower-cost hybrids (Civic and Insight) and hydrogen fuel cells. Ellis, however, claims no distinction should be made between “FCs” and electrics, since a fuel-cell car is basically an electric car powered by hydrogen-created electricity.

Then there is Toyota, the 800-pound hybrid gorilla. Toyota has yet a third route to success: muscling up on its hybrid strength.

“We believe in not being first to market but being best to market,” says Mary Nickerson, who is in charge of advanced-vehicle marketing at Toyota Motor Sales, also in Torrance. Last year, Toyota reached the 1 million sales mark with its Prius hybrid (gas-powered with fuel-saving electric technology).

“Our strategy is to be the hybrid masters, no pure electrics, and to explore fuel-cell technology,” says Nickerson. “We feel it’s going to take a lot more than one technology to make this new market work.”

Some 21% of consumers will not consider a pure electric car because of the need to plug-in at home, according Nickerson. “We believe that 10 years out, the winners will be all new technologies, but hybrids will be the largest winner of them all.”

Then again, as Honda’s Ellis says, “It all depends on the price of gas.”

Click here to read the entire article.

(Sources: Seattle PI via Autobloggreen)

With more and more electric car makers ready to blitz the market with Plug-in Hybrids Electric Vehicles and Plug-In Electric Vehicles, it is time the local communities took a stock of the supporting infrastructure necessary for feed these voltage-hungry vehicles.  The Seattle PI takes a look at the readiness of Seattle to handle the surge of electric vehicle.   Here are some interesting excerpts from the article:

Is Seattle charged for electric cars? Local electric car boosters think so, event though electric cars — other than such hybrids as the Prius — have not captured the fancies of more than a few people in the past 20 years.

“There’s a perfect storm this time around,” said Steve Lough, president of the Seattle chapter of the Electric Vehicle Association, who drives a 2000 Honda insight gas-and-electric hybrid.

On Aug. 5, the federal government announced that it will provide almost $100 million to install roughly 2,500 electric vehicle chargers each in the greater metropolitan areas of Seattle, Phoenix, Nashville, Portland and San Diego.

Roughly $20 million will go to Seattle for 2,550 chargers, Read said.

About 40 firms, including Nissan and eTec, will match the federal appropriations. Local governments will not be required to provide matching money, Read said.

This experiment is timed with Nissan’s planning to sell a new electric car — the “LEAF” — in late 2010. It hopes to initially sell 5,000 cars evenly split among the five metro areas.

This timing roughly coincides with General Motors’ plans to put possibly 10,000 of its all-electric “Volt” cars on the market in late 2010.

By comparison, Seattle has the nation’s largest chapter of the Electric Vehicle Association — with 230 members.

Local owners said recharging electric cars lead to different habits from refueling conventional vehicles.

“You basically plug it in whenever you park it,” said Dan Davids, owner of a 2002 Toyota RAV4-EV and president of the nationwide Plug-In America organization.

Fulling charging a car with a conventional 220-volt installation could take four to eight hours. So-called “fast” chargers with extra oomph could take 15 to 30 minutes to do the same.

But local electric car owners said those figures are misleading.

These cars rarely need full charges with the accompanying long repowering times, they said.

Electric cars are usually charged nightly at their homes. If recharged at business locations, the new power mostly “tops off” a battery usually containing most of its original charge, they said. The same “topping off” would occur when cars would be recharged at businesses.

Between the small amounts of electricity and the lack of wear-and-tear on moving engine parts, they estimated it costs about 2 cents a mile to operate their vehicles.

The three are optimistic that a major hurdle to owning electric cars could be finally conquered — the initial price tag. The Tesla Roadster — with about 700 sold so far — goes for $109,000. Many models of electric cars have been in the $50,000 to $100,000-plus range. “You’re financing the research and development for the next generation of technology,” Morrison said.

The Volt’s expected price tag is about $40,000 with a federal tax credit of $7,500 earmarked for early buyers. The same tax credits will go to buyers of the first LEAFs, which are expected to go for $25,000 to $33,000.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Tree Hugger)

During last week, many of us watched Nissan unveil its electric car, Leaf.  Those who where in Yokohoma, Japan for the unveiling had a chance to test drive the vehicle and get a demonstration of the technology behind the vehicle.  Our friends from Tree Hugger were kind enough to bring us a little more than what the rest of mdeia has offered thus far.   In an exclusive article, Tree hugger explains Nissan’s technology demonstration that utilizes the internet technology to interface with its electric vehicles. Check out the exclusive video (via You Tube) and a collection of pictures here.

As you can see in this quick demo, the car sends info to an Apple iPhone via a dedicated global data center. The software tells the user about the car’s state of charge, the cost to charge at a given hour of the day, and sends alerts when it’s fully juiced up.

Nissan also expects this is how drivers may program what times of day they want to charge up. Since tiered electricity billing is becoming more common (especially with the spread of smart meters), customers will want to charge their cars when it’s cheapest.

Image Courtesy: Tree Hugger

This smartphone interface also lets the user activate or pre-program the car’s climate control. This is important because heating and air conditioning draw a considerable amount of power, so it’s better to draw from the grid when plugged in, rather than once the car is on the road and running on its battery.

Although this interface isn’t likely to appear on the first-generation Leaf when it comes out in late 2010, Nissan has assured us that this is not just eye candy, and that smartphone connectivity is a feature that will make it to market.

Click here to read the entire article.