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BMW is adding 100 EV charging stations to US national parks
Today BMW turned on a EV charger at Thomas Edison National Historical Park, the former home of the inventor. It's the first of 100 stations that the German automaker plans on installing in US national parks over the next few years.
Duracell Powermat announces 24-Hour Power System, we go hands-on (video)
Since Duracell and Powermat formed their wireless charging alliance late last year, we've seen the Powermat debut at CES and heard quite a bit about the company's vision for future battery tech. Today the company is unveiling a new charging system which, while not drastically different from the Powermat we've seen before, bundles a few useful products together. In addition to a Powermat for charging the iPhone or iPhone 4, the 24-Hour Power System includes a phone case (necessary for juicing a phone on the Powermat) and a portable backup battery with both microUSB and Apple connectors. The whole package will set you back $100, and it's available online and in NYC stores starting today. Though the system currently only supports the iPhone, the company says it will add compatibility with "an array of other leading smartphones" by this fall. Check out our hands-on demo with Duracell Powermat CEO Ron Rabinowitz below. %Gallery-157374%
350Green to install 400 EV charging stations across the US
EV charging stations are still hard to come by here in the US and, while 400 new ones won't exactly blanket the nation, we'll take what we can get. 350Green is teaming up with Coulomb Technologies to build exactly that many new ChargePoint stations across New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana and California. With the latest announcement the ChargePoint Network is expected to grow to over 1,000 locations, many with fast charging capabilities. We wouldn't exactly call the plan a game changer but, like we said, every little bit helps. Check out the PR after the break.
Toyota premiers smart charging G-Stations in Japan, world instantly jealous
Recharging tired EVs and plug-in hybrids in Japan just got a little more exciting thanks to Toyota's upcoming G-Station charger, which relies on contact-less smart-cards to identify vehicles and owners. Toyota's Windows Azure-powered Smart Center drives the machines, which allows users to connect to the internet and use smartphone apps to find chargers, receive notifications, and check usage history. The G-Station will be coming this July in two flavors, creatively named Type A for the standard and Type B for the more advanced model. Pricing for the aforementioned units will be 280,000 yen ($3,469 USD) and 448,000 yen ($5,549 USD) respectively. Toyota is expecting to sell around 3,000 units by the end of 2012, making these stations available to its retail car dealers, shopping malls and restaurants. Soon the outside of pachinko parlors will be just as electric as the inside.
ECOtality announces Blink Mobile EV charging app
It's fast becoming apparent that no electric vehicle is complete without an accompanying smartphone app to help you find places to charge it, and it looks like ECOtality isn't about to let that trend pass it by. It's just announced its new Blink Mobile app for iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices, which will let folks locate Blink charging stations, check up on the charger's status, and receive various alerts (like when your car is finished charging at home). Unfortunately, you can't download it just yet, but ECOtality says it will be available sometime this summer, with the iOS and Android apps likely to come out a bit ahead of the BlackBerry app -- a web-based app is also in development. Head on past the break for the complete press release.
Google HQ gets juiced with Plugless Power EV charging unit
We've seen it adorned with a giant Honeycomb and an oversized Gingerbread man, and now Google's bringing a more practical addition to its Mountain View campus -- specifically, a Plugless Power EV charging station. Its maker touts the installation as "the first public release" of the handsfree re-juicing system, and says it will eventually provided power to a fleet of low-speed EVs already in use at El Goog HQ -- the first of which has already been retrofitted to get pumped up. Who knows, maybe now we'll see something come of Google's claims to make electrical vehicles charge more efficiently. Full PR after the break.
Houston will be home to America's largest car charging network, identity crisis
Everything is somewhat more gargantuan in Texas, so its only natural that Houston has its eye on having the largest network of electric vehicle chargers in the country. The plan is a privately funded brain-child of power plant operator NRG Energy, which hopes to install 150 charging stations in the 25 mile vicinity of downtown Houston starting in February. Chargers will be placed at common retail locations such as Walgreens and Best Buy, but given that 80 to 90 percent of charging will occur in homes, an $89 all-you-can-juice monthly plan will also include the installation of 240-volt charging systems in residences. NRG doesn't expect to turn a profit on its $10 million investment for several years, but hopes that taking the proactive step will create a lucrative business in the future as electric vehicle prices (hopefully) hit the skids. The company also wants to build a similar network in Dallas in early 2011, and perhaps San Antonio and Austin in the future as well. Still, while the plans are admirable for the home of big-oil, compared to London's government-backed 1,300 station plan, NRG's Houston aspirations still seem positively Rhode Island-sized.
Source London: network of 1,300 charging stations coming by end of 2013
London Mayor Boris Johnson has announced a plan to create a city-wide electric vehicle network dubbed Source London. It calls for 1,300 public-use charging stations to be installed by the end of 2013 - assuming the Mayan's weren't right about 2012. Any driver who registered for the network and paid an estimated annual membership fee of £100 (roughly $160 at the current exchange rate) could juice their EVs across all of the stations. For perspective, keep in mind that the city already has 250-plus stations with 16,729 electric vehicles and hybrids registered, of which only 2,100 draw power by being plugged in. That implies if the plan is completed, drivers would technically have better odds of finding a charging station than a gas pump in the city. Combined with Johnson's schemes to provide cell coverage in the tube and city-wide WiFi, it's also yet another example of how jolly old London is prepping for the future in between bites of scones and episodes of Top Gear. To learn more about the project, make sure to check out the source link below.
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.
Researchers propose 'roaming' charging stations to keep electric cars powered
No, we're not talking about robotic charging stations that roam the highways and recharge your car without even stopping (sadly), but a new system proposed Zafer Sahinoglu and his colleagues at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts may just help to fill in some of the gaps on the road. While exact specifics are a bit light, the basic idea is to have a series of "roaming" chargers that would be charged up at night and moved around based on demand -- demand that would be determined by sensors in electric vehicles, which would report their findings back to a central operations center. According to Sahinoglu, you'd only need five charging stations to cover 100 electric cars on a 100-kilometer stretch of highway, so it would seemingly be a quick and relatively inexpensive way to cover a large area -- assuming you can find an efficient way to actually move the chargers around. Look for more details to be announced at the Vehicular Technology Conference in Ottawa next week.
Coulomb partners with Ford, Chevy, Smart to deliver 4,600 free EV charging stations in US
Looks like Australia and Poland were just the beginning: Coulomb Technologies is looking to roll out nearly 5,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the US, effective immediately. If one of those cherry-red push pins is pointed at your neighborhood, you'll likely see the stations popping up at local businesses soon, and if you're looking to purchase a Chevy Volt, Tesla-powered Smart or one of Ford's two new EVs, you can even qualify to have a free station installed in your home. Partially paid for by a $15 million grant from the Department of Energy, the ChargePoint America program won't necessarily give you free electricity to go with it -- that "charge" in ChargePoint has a double meaning, after all -- but we're happy to see the zero-emissions future is finally on a roll. PR after the break.
