SOLAR TODAY - June 2011

SOLAR TODAY®
june 2011
VOL. 25, nO. 5

As cities plan for charging EVs,
Plug In America has some advice
based on long experience.

By DaniEl DaviDS

Mainstream electric vehicles (eV) from General Motors and nissan arenowrollingoutofdealershow- rooms, with more plug-ins due from Ford and Mitsubishi by year’s end. On April 13, Assistant energy Secretary David Sandalow told the Society of Automotive engineers that the industry is on target to put a million eVs on American roads by 2015. In this burgeoning market, the need for public recharging stations has begun to make an impact among municipal officials and corporate planners.

We have some advice for them. We, the nonprofit organization Plug In America, have been advocating for the electrification of our transportation system for the better part of a decade, and we’ve learned a lot about what eV drivers need.

Most of our members began driving eVs when the first wave of modern electric cars hit the road under California’s Zero emission Vehicle (ZeV) mandate, which was in effect between 1997 and 2003. While the original ZeV program encouraged installation of battery-charging infrastructure, most charging stations were installed at home locations, with roughly another 1,300 public stations across California. Most of these public stations are still in use, maintained by volunteers from the electric Auto Association.

A number of things have changed since 2003. First, automaker and industry groups have agreed on a common charging plug under SAe International standard j1772. All new eVs should be able to plug into any new charging station. The industry refers to the new chargers as eVSe (electric vehicle supply equipment). eV drivers consider this a huge improvement over systems used in the past. But as manufacturers ramp up to large-scale production, we’re about to experience some interesting times on the installation side.

Daniel Davids is president of Plug In America ( pluginamerica.org). The organization has been at once controversial and luminary about the role EVs can play in reducing our dependence on oil, improving our economy and protecting the environment. Today, Plug In America can fairly take a good deal of credit for getting new plug-in vehicles back on the road.

about among media, government bureaucracies and eVSe startups. The idea is that consumers worry whether they’ll have enough battery capacity to get back home. The implication is that without rapid and widespread installation of public charging stations, no one will want to drive an eV. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem.

In reality, experienced eV drivers don’t face
range anxiety any more than an airline pilot does
when she flies her jet from A to B. “We don’t
have a chicken-and-egg problem,” says Plug In
America Co-founder Marc Geller. “We have a
chicken problem.”
In other words, the only thing that has
been keeping any of us from driving eVs has
been that the automakers simply weren’t mak-
ing any of the damn things. I’ve driven my
all-electric Toyota RAV4 for more than four
years in Seattle, without access to any public
charging infrastructure whatsoever. I put a
thousand miles a month on it, never once
coming close to running out of juice. If there
were public charging stations available to my
car, and if they were located in useful spots,
I’d probably drive it 10 to 20 percent farther,
widening my operational radius.