Green Options » ecotality

The Financial Potential of the New Electric Vehicle Market

Jonathan Read — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:26:46 +0000

While Electric Vehicles (EVs) gear up to hit Main Street next year, EVs are already rolling through Wall Street.

An example is the recent (and successful) initial public offering (IPO) by the American battery maker A123 (AONE). A123 provides lithium-based batteries for EVs, and through its IPO, has now provided the finance community with one of the first mainstream opportunities to invest in a pure EV play. The overwhelming response from the “Street” reflects tremendous market confidence in the future of the EV business.

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Three Key Elements to ECOtality’s Electric Vehicle Project

Jonathan Read — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:57:48 +0000

-Above: the Nissan “Leaf” Electric Vehicle (learn more on the Nissan/eTEC partnership).

With $99.8 million from the Federal Government, ECOtality is on a mission to make America plug-in ready.

There’s been a tremendous flurry of activity in recent weeks with President Obama’s announcement of $2.4 billion in grants to accelerate the manufacturing and deployment of the next generation of U.S. batteries and electric vehicles. We at ECOtality and our subsidiary Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation (eTec) are thrilled to be a part of that activity as the recipients of $99.8 million grant for the largest electrification transportation project in history.

Our history in electric transportation dates back to 1989 and we have worked on every EV initiative in North America since then. Today, through our grant from the federal government, we’re embarking on an exciting project to truly make America plug-in ready: we are partnering with Nissan to deploy 5,000 zero-emission battery electric vehicles and 12,750 charging stations in five markets across the United States.

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ECOtality and Nissan to get $100M from Department of Energy

Elizoebeth Jensen — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:27:00 +0000

The Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation (eTec), a subsidiary of ECOtality, Inc. and Nissan North America win a $99.8M grant from the Department of Energy to support the largest deployment of electrical vehicles (EVs) and charging infrastructure in U.S. history.

The project will use Nissan’s LEAF, an early stage zero-emission EV to study and develop the logistics and necessary scale behind the implementation of a national charging infrastructure, that will in turn, support large-scale EV deployment. Initial stages of the project include the deployment of 5,000 EVs and EV charging stations in Arizona, California, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington. Don Karner, President of eTec, sums up the industry e-coup:

By studying lessons learned from electric vehicle operations and the infrastructure supporting these first 5,000 vehicles, the Project enables the streamlined deployment of the next 5,000,000 electric vehicles…Nissan and over 40 government and industry partners, will enable this Project to successfully pave the way for electric transportation nationwide.
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Portland Lands Major Upgrade to Electric Vehicle Infrastructure

Sam Adams — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:47:10 +0000

For a city with so many amazing trees, Portland is getting ready to add a bunch of new LEAFs to our streets.

No, that’s not a typo. I’m talking about the LEAF, Nissan’s just-unveiled electric vehicle, which is set to hit dealerships in the fall of 2010. In our quest to be the nation’s leader in electric vehicle infrastructure, usage and development, the Portland region took a big step forward today with the announcement that Nissan and eTec selected Oregon as one of five test markets for the largest deployment of EV’s and the associated charging station network in American history.

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Ecotality to Enter Huge Chinese EV Market

Susan Kraemer — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:00:19 +0000

Electric transport and infrastructure company ECOtality has made a move to expand its manufacturing and distribution operations for electric vehicle charging systems in China by entering into a joint venture with the Chinese firm Shenzhen Goch Investment to establish a manufacturing base in China.

In return for a $10 million investment, Shenzhen Goch Investment will have exclusive sale and distribution rights for ECOtality’s charging stations in China.

The Chinese government has instituted incentives designed to leapfrog the gasoline-based car industry. The state electricity grid has been ordered to set up electric car charging stations in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, and government research subsidies for electric car designs are increasing rapidly in China.

And an interagency panel is planning tax credits for consumers who buy alternative energy vehicles. Already the Chinese government is offering subsidies of up to $8,800 to taxi fleets and local government agencies in 13 Chinese cities for each electric (or hybrid) vehicle they purchase. Shah Agassi’s Better Place is also moving into the potential tipping point Chinese EV charging market.

The New York Times noted a report by McKinsey & Company last fall estimated that replacing a gasoline-powered car with a similar-size electric car in China would reduce greenhouse emissions by “only 19 percent” (since the country gets three quarters of its electricity from coal).

But 19 percent is actually a pretty sizable reduction in carbon emissions. And there is always the chance; (by adding more wind and solar on a massive scale) of being able to increasingly green the grid in the future.

By contrast, gasoline cars will increasingly run on rivers of blood as we begin to scrape the bottom of the peak oil barrel.

Image via ECOtality

Nissan to Trial Fast Charge Electric Car Network in Arizona

Andrew Williams — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:43:31 +0000

Nissan have announced plans to roll out a ‘fast charge’ electric car network in Arizona, capable of topping up batteries in as little as 10-15 minutes.

The Japanese company has teamed up with EV charge-tech firm ECOtality and the Pima association of government’s, (representing the Tucson, Arizona region), to establish a pilot-scale network in readiness for the launch of Nissan electric cars in the US next year.

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How to Build an Electric Car Charging Infrastructure: Smart Grids, Fast Charging and Universal Access

Nick Chambers — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:38:43 +0000

In a slew of announcements this week, a picture of what the future of plug-in vehicle charging might look like is starting to emerge.

The Problem:

There are 54 million garages for the 247 million registered cars in the US, meaning that the majority of cars are parked overnight in parking structures, parking lots or curbside.

As a result, most potential plug-in vehicle consumers do not have an adequate place to charge their vehicles. This problem is even more pronounced in urban areas like San Francisco, where only about 16% of cars are parked in garages overnight and the rest end up curbside or in parking lots.

Also, although the US power grid probably has enough overall capacity to supply energy to a nation of plug-in vehicles, it may not have the ability to charge them when they all plug-in and demand energy at the same time — say 6 pm every weekday.

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Ecotality: Energy Bookshelf: A Watery Travelogue

Ecotality Life — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:49:39 +0000

Editor's note: This week, Ecotality's A Siegel reviews Fred Pearce's When the Rivers Run Dry - Water: The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century. This post was originally published on July 12, 2007.

Humanity faces severe challenges in the coming century.

Are you fearful about Global Warming? I am.
Peak Oil giving you the blues? Join me in concern.

Well, let me add to your worries — as mine have been mounting. Water, one of the most renewable of renewable resources, ranks right up there with Global Warming and Energy in terms of key 21st century challenges.

Don’t believe me? (Or, if you already think this but want a more holistic perspective …) Well, perhaps it is time for you to spend some time with Fred Pearce and his wonderful When the Rivers Run Dry: Water–The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century.

When the Rivers Run Dry: Water–The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century provides a whirlwind tour (34 chapters in 310 pages) of water issues, a tour both geographic (from Cambodia to Los Angeles, the Aral Sea to the Zambezi River) and in subject matter (from drought to dams, desalinization to sanitation). The core strength of the book is this travelogue nature, in Pearce’s mosaic of historical, technological, social, and environmental realities, limitations, and possibilities.

Malta Flooding: June 2007Pearce lays out challenges, such as the massive amount of water that can go into crops (and, in essence, the trade in water via agricultural trade), the impacts of dams on reducing actual water availability (evaporation), and the ways in which mankind is bumping against limits in water availability around the globe.

For example, in the four-page chapter “Halliburton’s Job for Qaddafi”, Pearce discusses the $27+ billion that have gone into mining Libya’s “fossil water” (”ancient underground water that is not being replaced by the rains”) — taking water from the Nubian sandstone aquifer, which “is the largest freshwater source on earth … [with] some of the water … more than a million years old.” For what: to irrigate Libyan desert … “The vast capital cost and the growing bills for pumping water from ever greater depths beneath the desert make heat grown from the Saharan water some of the most expensive on earth.” Should we count the ways in which this money could have been better spent on a sustainable Libyan future? Such as setting up Concentrating Solar Power systems for exporting electricity to Europe?

The next chapter tackles “The World’s Largest Mass Poisoning”, highlighting the law of unintended consequences where good deeds can turn bad. Throughout Bangladesh and environs, massive numbers of people are poisoned with arsenic, as they use wells dug with international assistance in the 1980s seeking to provide them cleaner water from underground than the fouled surface waters they were using. “Such folly. They forgot that nature can poison water too.”

There is much to learn from this book, such as that reservoirs are a major factor in manmade global warming, as about 1/5th of manmade methane comes from rotting plant matter in reservoirs. This equates to about 7% of manmade Greenhouse effect, which is more than aircraft emissions. And, the vegetation decay is worsened by being in a reservoir, as in a more oxygenated environment, this decay would lead to CO2 rather than methane. For example, the “renewable” energy project built for the Ariane space program, in French Guiana, emits about three times the GHG of an equivalent coal-fired plant. [p 143-144]

Drought: Po RiverPearce argues that key areas of the world (China, India) will face water collapse in the coming decades unless there is major change. He lays out convincing cases of the criticality of water for numerous security crisis points (Israel & the Palestinians; the Kashmir).

But, this book is not just about dire circumstances and facts. One item made me recall (perhaps with nostalgia) one stream of Israeli concept — that they would achieve peace with and prosperity for their neighbors through learning how to make the desert bloom and sharing that knowledge freely and broadly. Pearce discusses how an Israeli archeologist, Michael Evenari, rediscovered “rain harvesting”. In this case, Evenari recreated “an ancient Nabatean farm” in the Negev desert.

When I paid a vist to the Avdat farm, it hadn’t rained for six weeks. All around was barren wasteland. But on the farm, the soil was damp, a field of wheat was growing, and almond and pistachio trees were in leaf. … It was a stunning sight. And as I have spoken to practitioners of rainwater harvesting around the world since, I have discovered how important the Negev experience has been in their work. [p 269]

South Asians learned rain harvesting from Avdat. Oxfam learned it from the Indians and brought it to Africa. And, so on. Sadly, this sort of sharing of ways to turn the desert green has not been Israel’s dominant interaction with its neighbors and the world.

The below is a five-minute discussion of a similar effort to green the desert. Take the time to watch — this gives me hope that ’solutions’ are possible.

When the Rivers Run Dry is far from a perfect work. The absence of footnotes, the non-discussion of energy issues, and minimal mention of Global Warming impacts all weaken its impact for me.

And, at the end of the day, I have a core disagreement: it starts (and ends) with the title. Water is critical, even one of the three most pressing 21st century challenges humanity faces, but it is not “the defining crisis”. We could “solve” water and still be killing ourselves and humanity’s future in accelerated Global Warming through using ever more polluting energy systems. No, water is key; water is important, but it is not “the defining crisis”.

Having written this, Pearce has written a great travelogue, engagingly written in short segments that can be read when the opportunity strikes and the book returned to at a later time. Each chapter can stand by itself, but the chapters create an entirety, laying down the basis for a holistic understanding of the Globe’s water challenges today and in the century to come.

And, finally, Pearce should be commended. When the Rivers Run Dry is not just a nightmare tale, but Pearce points to real advances and real reasons for some optimism about paths for ameliorating (if not solving) the globe’s water challenges. Global Warming … Peak Oil … Water … three critical challenges for the coming century. When it comes to Water, When the Rivers Run Dry outlines the challenge but also suggests solutions.

*NOTES*

* Celsias had an excellent discussion of water issues last week, Water Worries.