Over the weekend, at the Midwest Renewable Energy Association fair in Custer Wisconsin, one JB Straubel, the CTO of Tesla Motors, gave a talk. According to a report by Electrek, Straubel said that Tesla Motors is “talking with” other automakers about the Supercharger network. Clearly the current situation with three…
Buried in the middle of Honda’s announcement of the Honda Clarity Electric lease price ($269/month in case you’re interested) is a sign that CHAdeMO’s prominence is crumbling. Over the last several years we’ve had an unfortunate schism in electric car DC fast charging, with some automakers pushing for CHAdeMO, Tesla…
A single solitary sentence in Tesla’s announcement about doubling the Supercharger network could have a significant impact for urban-dwelling prospective electric car owners. Those who live in “multi-unit-dwellings”, like apartment or condominium complexes, usually have a hard time finding charging. Typically the landlord or home owners association puts up barriers…
While CHAdeMO had a head-start over all other DC Fast Charging systems for electric vehicles, it may be that it will lose out in the standards/market-share competition to retain relevancy. We are plagued with three (four counting the Chinese) competing DC fast charging systems, when we as electric vehicle consumers…
We don’t think of the Midwest as a hotbed of electric vehicle activity, do we? In actuality, the Kansas City area has had electric vehicle owners for 20 years or more. Over the last couple years, the local electrical utility (Kansas City Power and Light) has built up an impressive…
In late March, CharIN e.V. made the briefest of announcements that looks to make a huge impact on the electric car charging scene: “CharIN e. V. is happy to announce that Tesla Motors Inc. has been granted core membership in the association on 24th of February 2016.” This is important…
Recently a big-box retailer in Romania, Kaufland, announced it would build a network of 10 fast charging stations across Romania. I take this as a cool sign of progress with electric vehicle adoption. While Western Europe has taken to electric vehicles in a big way, especially Norway, Netherlands and Germany, Eastern Europe…
I’m working on a book meant to teach “Range Confidence” as a way to avoid letting Range Anxiety keep us from driving electric cars. The key knowing the capabilities of your car, the local charging network, the ins-and-outs of selecting between Level 2 and Fast charging, and having a car with fast charging.…
Yesterday, a post by John Voelcker of Green Car Reports noted that General Motors has no intention to invest in building fast charging infrastructure. He had been able to attend a meeting between the press and GM at CES last week. Several GM executives agreed, no support by GM to…
Earlier today Volkswagen unveiled the BUDD-e, a reboot of the venerable VW Bus that had been passed through an uglifier and given an ultra-modern electric drive train and infotainment wizardry. The most curious part of the car is its recharge time, which Volkswagen described as allowing a “80% recharge in…
Nissan and BMW announced today a welcome deal to build dual-protocol fast charging at 120 locations across 19 states. This is another sign of cooperation between two main factions of the competition to establish the dominant fast charging protocol. For the last five years, a big question dogging the electric vehicle…
Audi seems to have a clue — for long range electric cars to succeed, there must be a widespread fast charging network offering charging rates well above 100 kiloWatts. Tesla Motors has demonstrated with its Supercharger network that the combination of 70 kiloWatt-hours or more energy, and 120 kiloWatt charging,…
An announcement today from Audi tells us that the German automakers are, through the Charging Interface Initiative e.V. (CharIN), planning to extend the Combo Charging System to support 150 kiloWatt charging rates. This jibes with plans from Audi, Porsche, and others, to begin selling electric cars with 95 kiloWatt-hour or more…
Poking around the Plugshare & ChargePoint maps it’s clear that a long-awaited West Coast inter-city deployment of fast charging stations has begun. Last January, ChargePoint, BMW and Volkswagen jointly announced a project to deploy two strings of fast charging stations, one on the West Coast the other on the East Coast.…
Today two different car makers announced expansion of their electric vehicle charging station programs. We applaud any increase in charging station deployments, because there is a crying need to switch to electric drive, and more charging stations is an essential necessary step. However, the charging stations aren’t being deployed for public use, but for…
