Last week the US Department of Energy announced a $68 million package of “available funding for early-stage research of advanced vehicle technologies that will enable more affordable mobility, strengthen domestic energy security, and enhance U.S. economic growth.” The advanced technologies in this case are about low-cobalt battery designs, and more importantly…
Electric cars with 400 miles range are preferable, according to presenters at the CharIN Alliance 1st annual North American meeting held in Fremont earlier this week, see CharIN alliance meets on Tesla’s doorstep, presents CCS as the best DC Fast Charging system for electric cars. The main topic of the meeting was…
On Monday the CharIn Alliance (the organization behind the Combo Charging System, a.k.a. CCS) held its first North American conference in Fremont CA. The location was a Marriot Hotel directly across the highway from Tesla’s factory in Fremont, a fact that seemed pointed in the direction of trying to catch…
Look out Tesla Motors and ChargePoint, here comes a charging network with big plans. Electrify America just announced a plan to build a nation-wide electric car charging network comprising thousands of charging locations over the next 10 years. What’s most important is the coverage of inter-city routes as shown in…
What if Tesla Motors were to be the winner in the market share battle over DC Fast Charging services? Electric car owners are pawns in a battle between automakers on DC Fast Charging protocols and services. The three (four if you count China) charging standards, CHAdeMO, Combo Charging System, and…
If the standards-based charging networks, and the automakers other than Tesla Motors, are to have a chance, standards-based high-power charging stations like what ABB just unveiled must exist. The Tesla Supercharger network is ingenious only in the forethought exhibited by Tesla Motors to invest in a widespread high power DC…
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…
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…
The Tesla Model 3 is due for its production launch in a few months. While some of us are pondering our personal budget, Tesla Motors has a bigger issue on its mind. The key advantage they have over other automakers is the extensive reach of the Supercharger fast charging network.…
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…
At the beginning of 2015, BMW, VW and ChargePoint declared a plan to establish fast charging corridors along the East and West Coasts of the USA. Initially I thought this would be bad, because they’d install just ComboChargingSystem stations leaving CHAdeMO station owners in the lurch, and worsening the Big…
Electric vehicle charging stations with WiFi support could become commonplace. Texas Instruments, a.k.a. TI, has just published an EVSE (a.k.a. electric vehicle service equipment) reference design that includes WiFi support and an ARM-based processor. I believe many companies use these published reference designs as the starting point for products, sometimes…
This week Tesla Motors unveiled a larger battery pack for the Tesla Model S. With a 100 kiloWatt-hour battery pack they’re now up to 315 miles EPA range, and it also let Tesla juice up the Ludicrous mode for an even faster 0-60 miles/hr time and claim to be selling…
A battle is being fought in California over whether electric utility companies can own/deploy electric vehicle charging infrastructure. In the case of PG&E’s proposal, it has drawn huge amount of criticism and in late 2015 the CPUC forced PG&E to limit their plan while the Commission weighed whether PG&E should be allowed…
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…
