Electric Vehicle Adoption: Ready Or Not - Here It Comes

I want to rant about something before I write this post... Why one earth did this person walk into the an essentially empty coffee shop and sit across the table facing me? Now whenever I let my mind wander and look away from my screen, I am forced to make awkward eye-contact with this creep.

Annoying... but I digress.

As if it a huge surprise, people seem to be talking more and more about electric vehicles these days. Lets recap if you are having trouble wrapping your brain around this phenomenon:

1. Gas prices are ridiculously high and continue to be relatively volatile.
2. The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf have been rolled out to a highly demanded market.
3. Ford and Toyota have announced their upcoming plugin vehicles respectively.
4. President Obama is still aiming at the (relatively unachievable) goal of 1 million EV's on the road by 2015.
5. Steven Chu has been sexing it up with Coulomb Technologies in California after they reached their 500th charging station in North America.
6. Google announced the largest corporate charging infrastructure to date.
7. Almost every day there is announcement on technology promising to make charging faster.

It would seem that there is a definite trend towards EV adoption, but there are still people that are resistent to the adoption of this technology. Putting aside the tired commentary that these people are the same as the crowd that was "against automobile adoption when horses are just fine," these people do bring up some fine points that I am going to systematically attac...I mean address now.

EV's Are More Carbon Intensive To Produce

I am not going to argue against this point mainly because there are 500 different environmental studies of what is actually going into the production of these batteries...mainly because the companies that are producing these batteries guard their intellectual property as if their lives depended on it.

However, the carbon emissions from vehicles is well documented and the numbers don't lie. They are terrible. I seriously find it hard to believe that the one time environmental impact expenditure of producing a battery for a EV is more damaging than the repeated beating of extracting, producing, and burning gasoline.

Electricity Is Just As Dirty As Gasoline

Coal is filthy. No doubt about that. However, this argument is assuming that going forward we are going to continue building more coal-fired electricity plants as we continue to maintain our infrastructure.

This simply isn't the case because the world is moving towards more renewable energy production, the most recent case being Boulder, CO who is aiming to get 90% of their electricity from clean sources. It is unrealistic that all of America is going to get all of their electricity from clean sources in the near future, but eventually we are going to have a much high percentage which will make this argument of electricity not being any cleaner than gasoline pointless.

EV's Don't Have Adequate Charging Times Or Driving Distances

I don't have a great argument here because the fact is that both of these points is true. Until EV's can get longer driving distances, there is going to be a need to charge your vehicles more frequently which is disappointing if you just think about the charging times.

However, by ramping up charging infrastructure, you can mitigate these concerns of charging because people don't drive super long distances very often and parking and charging your car while you go shopping or while you are at work becomes less of a big deal.

With that said, Steven Chu has been motivated to have cheaper, longer ranged EV's for consumers in the near future, and I am not one to bet against that guy.

Thats all for now... and you guessed it - I really just wrote this post so I could post my favorite photoshop of Steven Chu.

Electric Vehicles: Coulomb Charging Station

I maintain that one of the most exciting changes that is going to develop in the next 10 years is the continued introduction of electric vehicles.

Whether these vehicles are PHEV (plugin hybrid electric vehicles) or straight EV (electric vehicles), the issue of charging infrastructure is going to be one of the most important (and potentially lucrative) issues that will need to be addressed.

Coulomb Technologies has been on a mission to address this issue, and recently their name has been popping up more and more in the news. Recently, Steven Chu congratulated Coulomb Technologies on their 500th charging station in the United States.

Coulomb already has an international presence with nearly 4,000 stations shipped worldwide, but it is still impressive to see that there have already been 500 installed in the United States (most of which are meant for public use).

I am personally excited about plugin vehicles because it opens the door for the following:

• New automotive innovations.
• American jobs (if the big producers get ahead of the curve and begin ramping up EV production).
• Clean energy production because people aren't going to want to expand the grid with traditionally dirty production to support this new clean transportation technology.
• More sustainable city living because these cars are currently perfect for short driving distances, and city residents typically never drive more than the ranges that these cars have to offer.

Either way, it was good to see Coulomb in the news with Steven Chu because this signals that the technology is catching on, and lets face it, I always love to have an excuse to post this picture of Steven Chu.

Texas Cities Get More Electric Vehicle Charging

NRG Energy (editors note: I get it!) has announced that they are going to be installing 70 EV charging stations in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area and 50 more in Houston by the end of next year, which is exciting considering Texas's traditional focus on oil.

NRG has holdings in wind, solar, and nuclear energy which is good considering one of the complaints about electric vehicles is that a majority of the electricity that will be used to power these vehicles is coming from dirty sources such as coal.

Yes, I realize that nuclear isn't completely clean and has risks which have become painfully apparent with the happenings in Japan, but I still maintain that it is a better technology than coal which essentially poisons everything it touches.

The only lame part of this story is the fact that NRG is planning on calling these stations "freedom stations." Nothing against freedom, but seriously? So weak.

In any event, the EV's success is going to be initially determined by the southern and western states which all have ideal climates for EV operation (warm, dryish, not too many hills). Because of this, it is good to see that cities are getting ahead of the curve and providing a charging infrastructure for the initial adopters of these vehicles.

Electric Vehicle Charging? There's An App For That.

First off, I am sorry that I missed Sunday Comics and Monday's post. I was sick and I probably would have just posted gibberish anyways seeing that I am the only writer for this blog, so it was probably for the best that I waited until today.


With that said, I am planning to have a post go out today (obviously), tomorrow, and then Friday - all of which will be followed by TWO comics over the weekend. I don't spoil you because I care, I just like the attention.
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I've been looking for a way to weasel in a reference to the iPhone on this blog for a while now, but I haven't seen an opportunity until now.

There is a new addition to Apple's App Store that is promoting a sustainable lifestyle through EV Plug Sharing. It is called PlugShare, which has been released by California-based Xatori.

The New York Times screams:

“We want to break down that barrier in people’s minds about where it’s acceptable to charge,” said Armen Petrosian, Xatori’s co-founder and chief technology officer. “We think the infrastructure to charge is everywhere.”

Drivers can punch in their destination to see the availability of shared outlets as well as public charging stations along their route.

This is pretty cool because even if you don't own an electric car, you can still be part of the adoption movement of EV's by making your home available as a charging station. Why would you do that?

Profit.

I started writing this article just so I could put this picture on the blog.

The way I see it, this is a great way to make some money off these EV suckers... I wish I could get one.

If you have a person that wants to plug into your charging station for an hour or so, this will cost you about 20 cents. Solution? Charge them a dollar.

This is Lemonade Stand 101. Granted, if you are running a Level 2 charging station, the 240 Volt AC you are distributing will be more expensive, but that is just when you scale your prices.

Are you going to become rich doing this? Probably not, but at least you are doing something to help inspire change. One of the biggest hurdles that EV's will face is the charging network that needs to be put in place.

However, Apps like this open up a world of possibility that isn't available with the traditional gasoline infrastructure, and this could end up being pretty cool if people embrace the technology.