San Francisco City Hall gets its own electric vehicle charging stations
By Donald Melanson 
posted February 19th 2009 4:32PM
posted February 19th 2009 4:32PM
It's a long way from the city-wide infrastructure that GM and others envision, but San Francisco has now at least taken one more step in that direction with three new Smartlet electric vehicle charging stations installed right outside City Hall. Those chargers, on loan from Coulomb Technologies, will be used to charge vehicles from ZipCar, City CarShare, and one unspecified "plug-in car in the City of San Francisco municipal fleet," and Mayor Gavin Newsom (an early EV1 owner himself) says he hopes they are just the first of more to come, adding that he's also talking to other Bay Area cities about purchasing additional electric vehicles for municipal fleets. In related news, AutoblogGreen also got confirmation from ZipCar that its first plug-in vehicle is in fact a one-off converted PHEV Prius designated specifically for City Hall, though it apparently didn't elaborate on any future plug-in vehicles.
[Via AutoblogGreen]
[Via AutoblogGreen]
Annoying technical point, but the Mayor leased an EV-1 and didn't own one -- nobody did.
Gavin Newsom is a scumbag.
That's Mayor scumbag to you!
How much do these cost to use?
Can it charge my dead iPhone battery?
It's a start, can't say anyone else is going though with these things. These early adopters are the best way to test these systems.
how can they afford this?
thought they were hundreds of billions in debt.
In case you missed the memo, the entire country is hundreds of trillions in debt. Not a reason to stop spending on everything ever right now.
California is at the point where they are keeping (stealing) state tax refunds, and are near laying off 20,000 state workers (boo hoo).
This is a BS purchase, but in San Fran the hippies may be too high to notice.
In San Francisco the hippies realise that investing in this infrastructure will help them and the region in the long run. Thanks for playing, Modesto.
Investing in infrastructure is all well and good, but it doesn't look that wise when 20,000 Californian employees might lose their jobs.
Because they proved so useful in the 15 years we've been trying it...
I want my money back
Until they create the electric car that can be charged at home fully and reliably enough to allow for all daily driving, or, create a battery that can be charged in less than a few minutes, electric cars will not become mainstream. Expecting cities and retailers, etc to put charging stations all over the place is not feasible in the short or medium term. This is just the city making a political statement.
Awesome! As state goes bankrupt...
You all need to watch "who killed the electric car" Sanfran did have an electric car charging infrastructure back in the late 90's and it was allowed to collapse through the underhanded government petitioning of the auto manufacturers who resented the california state governments requirement of the production of some zero emission vehicles. People act like electric cars haven't been used successfully as a day car before when in fact this has been possible for over a decade.
I may be mistaken, sanfran may not have had the infrastructure. It might have been LA but still my point still has merit.
All you need to do is math. The EV1 cost GM 1 billion to develop. It was a tiny 2 seater with too many compromises to me a "regular" car. It was sold at a loss (about $40k based on the lease price) over 10 years ago and the estimates true cost to build is around $80k.
You will note this compares well the the Tesla that has a similar chassis/design but a more expensive motor/battery combination and cost around $120k to build(also sold at a loss).
So electric cars loose the range and size compared to gas cars for some 5 times the cost.
these battery powered cars are for sissys. i want a nuclear powered car.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon
Nuclear isn't the way to go. Fusion is the answer! Ironically, Ford has a car named that but it isn't really powerd by Fusion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Fusion
I want my bailout back, bailout back, bailout back...chillys!......ba..