BeautifulEarth

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  • Beautiful Earth's NYC solar powered EV charger follows the sun to Brooklyn Bridge Park

    by 
    Tim Stevens
    Tim Stevens
    03.19.2011

    The solar-powered, green and white Beautiful Earth Group EV charging station, which once found its shipping container internals filled with a Mini E, is no longer. Well, it's no longer where it was, anyway. It's now somewhere completely different, a place that happens to be just down the road, a land known by many as Brooklyn. It's Brooklyn Bridge Park, specifically, and Better Earth has donated the thing to the facilities department there. It'll be used to charge up the service vehicles that patrol the place, apparently including a pair of GEM and Toro Workman EVs that look like they might have been Photoshopped into the promotional picture above. The presumably non-digitally-manipulated ones will all be recharged using the charging station's 24 solar cells, generating 5.6kW and, ultimately, saving the world. Or, at least, the Park.

  • New York gets its first solar EV charging station, you can't use it

    by 
    Tim Stevens
    Tim Stevens
    12.16.2009

    What do you do when you've got two disused shipping crates, some photovoltaics, and a couple buckets of toxic green paint? Why, you make a solar electric vehicle charging station, the first in New York as it happens. It was created by Beautiful Earth Group, which whipped up this self-contained charging station to juice the company's car, a similarly painted BMW Mini E that just so happens to fit nicely inside -- so long as you don't want to open the doors too wide. About three hours charges the little sucker up for its maximum range of 100 miles, which ought to be just enough to get you out to the Hamptons. Not that you'd want to go there this time of year. Update: We searched for an earlier solar station and came up empty, but vyper0 commented to let us know that this is indeed not the first for NY state, just the first for NYC. There was one installed out on Long Island earlier this year, which would mean you could not only get out to the Hamptons, but get back!