Orlando is ChargePoint America's First City to Formally Announce - 6/17/10 at 2pm

Orlando has the distinction of being the first city in ChargePoint America's grant roll-out to formally announce the plan to its citizens.  Here's the agenda...please RSVP if you plan on coming...I'll be there!

More announcements to come...Central Florida is getting hot about EVs!

Electric Vehicle Charging Station Announcement & Ribbon Cutting   June 17 2 p.m. · Orlando City Hall Plaza Please join us for the launch of the ChargePoint America program in Central Florida! ChargePoint America is an ambitious plan to bring necessary and needed public and home charging infrastructure for electric vehicles across the United States. Orlando will unveil the first installed charging station as a part of this program. Please join our electric vehicle friends, government officials and executives at Orlando City Hall Plaza as we officially plug in and charge up. · City of Orlando, Mayor Buddy Dyer · Orange County Government, Florida, Mayor Richard T. Crotty · OUC-The Reliable One Board President, Katie Porta· Coulomb Technologies Executive Vice President, Bret Sewell· NovaCharge President, Helda Rodriguez Featuring: Coulomb Technologies' ChargePoint® Networked Charging Station for Electric Vehicles / The smart fortwo electric drive RSVP by Wednesday, June 16 Click to RSVP now: Yes, I plan to attend.   About ChargePoint America The $37 million ChargePoint America program is made possible by a $15 million grant funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the Transportation Electrification Initiative administered by the Department of Energy. ChargePoint America will provide 4,600 public and home ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations by October 2011. For more program information, visit www.chargepointamerica.com.

EVSE and LEED, Two Acronyms That Work Well Together

How can installing Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE...a.k.a. Charging Station) help a building get LEED certified?

The answer depends on whether you're talking about installing about installing at New Construction or an Existing Building.

EVSE in New Construction
In the 2009 LEED Reference Guide for New Construction, EVSE is addressed in Sustainable Sites Credit 4.3 Option 2.  You can get 3 points for satisfying the requirement is to provide Alternative Fueling Stations for 3% of the parking capacity (or 3 spaces for every 100).  If you would like to see a nice overview of this Credit, checkout this video from www.LEEDForContractors.com.

EVSE in Existing Buildings
In the 2009 LEED Reference Guide for Green Building Operations and Maintenance, EVSE is addressed in Sustainable Sites Credit 4.0.  You can get 3-15 points for satisfying the requirement to reduce the number of commuting trips by your occupants using conventionally powered vehicles by 10-75%.  This requirement requires you to survey your building's occupants to understand how much your actions have reduced commuting trips.  Installing EVSE is one of the incentives the guide suggests to reduce the use of conventionally powered vehicles.

The riddle is: Why have two different requirements?  Seems to me that both of these credits could be used in New AND Existing Buildings.  Anyone got an answer?

EVs will Fail in the Marketplace!

I recently read a great article on BNET from Jim Motavalli that covers a negative view of the success of EVs.  I think it's great to read and consider the dissenting opinion as it helps those of us trying to make EVs succeed...besides, no one really knows what will happen...we just have educated guesses.  You can read Jim's article below...and make sure to check out the linked article.


I ultimately think EVs will take over most of the light duty vehicles because of their efficiency (esp. less waste due to heat), fuel prices (only going up), and their superior management of energy (regen braking, idle).  Batteries are just on Version 1 and they will get better due to the immense amount of R&D they are getting and the ultimate upside potential of the killer chemistry.

An announcement that gave me LOTS of hope about EVs was the Nissan Leaf's price...and the assumptions that they were able to get the price of their battery pack to less than $400/KWH big bright spot on EVs biggest announcement.  Previously, the conventional wisdom was that new generation Lithium Ion EV batteries were going to cost $900/KWH+.  The fact that Nissan/NEC has figured out how to make their Lithium Ion Spinel batteries this cheap is a huge accomplishment and stake in the ground for EV batteries.

I think the EVs growth is tied to gas prices...the more they go up, the more EVs will be sold.  For each event that causes petroleum prices to spike (hurricanes, wars, spills, mid-east troubles, etc.), we'll see short term growth spurts like we saw with Prius adoption in the 2000s.  I graphed this relationship back in September 09: http://www.pluginrecharge.com/2009/09/gas-prices-key-incentive-to-go-electric.html

There has been some false starts with EVs, but I think the battery technology is finally good enough so that drivers don't have to give up much to switch.