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Car2go brings North America's first all-electric carsharing program to San Diego
When we tried out car2go's carsharing program earlier this year, we knew it was only a matter of time before the service rolled out to other parts of the country. Little did we know, however, that it would be doing so atop a flotilla of EVs. Yesterday, the Daimler subsidiary announced that San Diego will be the next city to adopt car2go, making it the first in North America to boast a completely electric carsharing system. The program will kick off sometime before the end of this year, when 300 Smart Fortwo plug-ins storm the city, each powered by a 30 kW electric propulsion system and a lithium ion battery that promises to last for up to 84 miles on a single charge. Whenever the cars run out of juice, drivers will be able to recharge at any of the 1,000 Blink EV charging stations (due to be installed by the end of 2011), before heading off to windsail, buy white linen pants, or whatever people do under perennial sunshine. Curiosity piqued? Steer past the break for the full press release.
ECOtality teams with Sprint to connect Blink EV charging network
ECOtality teamed up with Best Buy a few months back to expand its network of Blink EV chargers, and it's now finally announced which company will actually be connecting that network. ECOtality will be relying on Sprint's Command Center M2M solution, which will handle things like monitoring and electronic payments, and allow ECOtality to display digital content for advertising or other information, among a host of other network-related things. From an end-user perspective, that also means that folks will be able to keep watch on the Blink network from various devices, find chargers near them with GPS, and receive notifications of a charge interruption or completion. Head on past the break for the complete press release.
DC Fast Charger joins the ECOtality EV charging station fleet, looks like a fuel pump
You can't help but smile, can you? ECOtality's latest entrant into the rapidly expanding Blink line of EV chargers looks awfully familiar to avid motorists, and for good reason. Designed to mimic a conventional petrol pump, the DC Fast Charger should blend right in when installed in Best Buy parking lots, gas stations and beyond, with the company aiming to get these positioned in a wide variety of locations in order to ease "range anxiety." We're also told that motorists will eventually be able to utilize the Blink Network Smartphone Application in order to locate the nearest charging station and receive GPS directions, and an RFID-enabled payment system makes it easy to drain your wallet, rejuvenate your vehicle and get you back on the open road. There's even a 42-inch LCD on the top, and while it's primarily engineered for ads and information, we're sure a few wire swaps would have your Xbox 360 displayed in no time flat. The DC Fast Charger should be hitting 16 major American cities in the near future, and there's a video after the break to tide you over.
Best Buy teams up with ECOtality to install EV charging stations at 12 stores
Best Buy has already started selling some electric scooters and motorcycles in its stores, and it's now about to expand even further into the EV business. The retailer has just announced a partnership with ECOtality, which will be providing Best Buy with some of its Blink EV charging stations that will be installed at twelve stores in Tucson, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle by March of next year. That's being done as part of the government-funded EV Project that ECOtality is overseeing, and Best Buy says that it may install chargers at additional stores if the initial test phase proves to be successful. Full press release is after the break.
