We want more electric cars on the road, and one thing sure to help is workplace charging. By charging at the office the effective daily electric driving range is doubled – because you start from home fully charged, and get fully charged at the office. Since it’s so critical that workplace charging exist, whose responsibility is it to help companies learn about the benefits of workplace charging and otherwise goose along charging station installation at workplaces?
What’s prompting this is a Facebook posting by someone whose office is next door to Google and Intuit, and therefore see’s the extensive workplace charging systems at both companies. But, the fellow doesn’t work for either company, and is trying to get HIS company to set up charging stations. He’s looking for any information anybody else has gathered as a sales pitch to upper management.
The problem is the upper management at most companies is not as enlightened as are Google’s management. Google has an amazingly extensive charging station network at the Mountain View campus. Spread among their huge real estate holdings are literally hundreds of charging stations, along with dozens of Google-owned electric cars used in a car sharing fleet, and hundreds of other electric cars owned by employees.
Another problem is the allocation of resources. Why are the charging stations on Google’s campus limited to Google employees? Why can’t employees of neighboring companies use them? Well, Google did pay for the stations, and they’re located on Google’s property, making it tricky to share the stations with employees of other companies. But couldn’t things be organized differently?
In any case, what about the average boss? The one whose primary task is finding customers to pay money for products or services, and charging station installation is way down the list next to all the other “nice to have” perks. It’s important to the individual electric car driver, of course, but the typical bossman won’t see the importance.
What they’ll need is a slide deck & presentation outlining the pro’s & con’s, how it helps employee productivity, how it can decrease the corporate environmental footprint at a time when all kinds of environmental impacts are coming under close scrutiny, etc..
If only there were thousands of brave employers with the vision to install charging stations, millions of employees would feel brave enough to buy electric cars, and we could … but… the bossman isn’t going to buy into that dream. Bossmen get into that position by carefully weighing how to expend corporate resources – ideally.
Anyway, is there already such a slide deck someone has put together? I don’t know, but maybe some LongTailPipe readers know of something. If so, please make a comment below.
In the meantime I had the idea to check websites for charging station networks and manufacturers, and unfortunately didn’t find much:
http://www.chargepoint.com/solutions
They have a lot of useful information and there’s even a case study focusing on workplace charging at Google.
http://greenlots.com/ While Greenlots offers Enterprise solutions – there isn’t any information on the public website.
http://www.carcharging.com/prop-owners/office-buildings/ The CarCharging Group owns the Blink network, and Blink stations are frequently installed at workplaces. Their website has a minimal bullet list of some benefits.
http://www.geindustrial.com/products/electric-vehicle-charging-stations/wattstation-connect GE Wattstations are apparently targeted to both workplace charging and public charging, but their website doesn’t have much information for corporate decision makers.
https://www.semacharge.com/ and http://www.semaconnect.com/markets/corporate-office/ is a charging network, and workplace charging is one of their focuses. But, do they have any information to help corporate guys? Nope.
http://www.nrgevgo.com/commercial-office-building-owner-manager-or-employer/ While we might know eVgo most for their public charging stations, they’re also looking to play a big role in workplace and multi-unit-dwelling charging. The above page is meant to sell a corporate decision maker on electric car charging stations. Unfortunately the page doesn’t explicitly do so, instead it says to contact eVgo sales.
That’s probably what’s going on across the board, is that the charging network operators won’t necessarily post their full sales pitch online. Instead, they will want to post just enough to get someone to call the sales team, after which the real sales pitch is delivered.
Here’s a few charging station vendors, whose websites focus more on the features of the charging stations, and not so much on why a corporation should install some stations. http://www.clippercreek.com/ http://www.leviton.com/OA_HTML/SectionDisplay.jsp?section=37818&minisite=10251 http://www.schneider-electric.us/sites/us/en/solutions/energy-efficiency/electric-vehicles/electric-vehicles.page
In short, the best information I found available to the public to justify workplace charging stations to corporate decision makers was hosted by the ChargePoint website. But even that didn’t look like very much.
Consider the plight of a typical employee, he just bought an electric car and now wants the bossman to install a charging station. While this person might be enthusiastic, they probably aren’t the decision maker, and therefore not the person to call any of those companies. How do they get the right person to make the call?
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