Helping cities prepare for electric cars
BOULDER, Colo.--When President Obama said that he wanted to put 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015, it sounded good to many people worried about the effects of fossil fuels.
But when you consider that there are currently about 230 million vehicles on the road in the United States alone, you realize that Obama's goal amounts to less than one half of 1 percent--hardly what's going to move the U.S. into a post-gas future.
Project Get Ready, an initiative of the Rocky Mountain Institute, is trying to help cities get ready for an electric-car future.
(Credit: Project Get Ready)Still, to the people at Project Get Ready, an initiative of the Rocky Mountain Institute, anything that can jump-start a culture trajectory away from fossil fuels is a good thing. And that's why Project Get Ready is starting to work with cities around the country to prepare them, their communities, utilities and merchants for a day when the electric car is not only a viable option but a significant piece of the transportation puzzle.
On Road Trip 2009, I stopped in Boulder to talk with Matt Mattila, one of the leaders of Project Get Ready. I wanted to hear whether he and his team really think that electric cars can become a dominant fixture on our roads and in our cities.
The answer? Not anytime soon, but if we all work together to prepare, it may well happen in the not too, too distant future. But it will take serious thought, cooperation among various constituencies, and a willingness to think long term.
Don't make Chevy Volt a disaster
One of the most important goals has to be, Mattila argued, that electric-car ventures currently under way not fail before they can even get off the ground. That means that by the time a car like the much-heralded Chevy Volt starts to roll off production lines in a year or two, that there be enough of an infrastructure in place to handle them.
To Mattila, one major consideration is the thinking that's going to go on in the board rooms of companies like General Motors and other car makers, which are going to look at the market and the cultural environment and say: We're getting these new cars ready, so make sure there's enough charging stations, easy-to-get permits, consumer education and fleet buy-in. The point? So that, "when Chevy hands its billion-dollar Volt off, it's not going to be a big disaster because there's nowhere to plug it in," Mattila said.
That's where Project Get Ready comes into play, he said. The idea is to work on spreading awareness of what it takes to have an infrastructure for electric cars so that enough cities around the country feel like it's worth the effort to prepare for that future.
As well, it's important to address the chicken-and-egg problem: If consumers don't feel they have places to plug in their new electric cars, they won't buy them. And if people won't buy them, car makers won't make them.
"These few years are critical," Mattila said, "so focus on making (the coming launches) great, so that early adopters evangelize" electric cars and the experience of driving and maintaining them.
But, of course, there's nowhere in the United States that is ready for this yet. So Project Get Ready considers its major task to try to identify the gap that exists in understanding what it takes, and bringing all the various players to the table: city planners, local coalitions, nonprofits and, last, but not least, big utilities.
"They have to be part of the (solution)," Mattila said of the utilities. "If thousands of cars are going to be plugged into their grid, they need to know who's going to be plugged in, and at what rate."
Most will plug in at home
One thing that the electric car has going for it, according to Mattila, is that 80 percent of the charging up that will be done will be done at home or at the office. Many people who own such cars will install a charging station at home, taking some of the burden off the public infrastructure.
"But what can we do to make people see that there are public charging stations" as well, said Mattila. "It's getting people comfortable with seeing them out there" in public.
That's not going to be possible, of course, unless cities, large merchants, and/or utility companies feel there is an economic incentive to make the substantial investment in widespread charging stations.
Today, however, there is a lot of public money available for such projects. Mattila said that as much as half of the costs of charging stations can be offset by government funding. As well, it's a young market without a lot of competition, so some companies making charging stations are installing them for free to try to establish a market.
Others are following a cell phone business model and are installing the charging stations for free, but charging access fees for using them. And still others feel they will only make money by charging for the installation. The folks at Project Get Ready clearly see that merchants may have the most to gain by investing in the infrastructure.
"Our approach is to make a real business case," Mattila said, "so that Gold's Gym and UA Theaters (and such companies) have a real incentive to put them in on their own."
The reason? So that cities don't have to pay for everything.
At the same time, Mattila said that utility companies are looking at a huge windfall when it comes to electric cars and the power they will require. "There could be a huge opportunity for utilities," he said, "to own the boxes and install them and say, 'We can determine when you get energy...how much you get and how much you pay."
The idea there, he added, is that the utilities can ensure that if people plug in during high-demand periods, they pay a premium.
Still, despite the potential economic advantages to utility companies, Mattila said that Project Get Ready's research suggests that the most common models for electric-car infrastructure will be cities and large merchants paying for it.
"The Wal-Marts of the world (can do it to) fulfill the promise of being more green," he said. To them, "it's a drop in the bucket, so they view it as a loss leader to get people coming into the store to buy things."
In that scenario, he added, you might someday see a charging station at every parking spot in a Wal-Mart lot.
More efficient and less expensive
When the Volt comes out, it is expected to be fairly expensive, along the lines of a standard-engine luxury vehicle. So to Mattila, the goal has to be to survive the early adopter stage and get to a point where not only are the second-generation Volts affordable for a larger consumer base, but where there are enough public charging stations available to handle future generations of less expensive electric cars with smaller batteries and shorter driving ranges.
Some people want the green car of tomorrow to be a hydrogen fuel vehicle, Mattila acknowledged, but added that there's no existing hydrogen infrastructure. "The entire country's wired," he said, touting electric cars, "and we can plug in just about anywhere."
Despite his full-time efforts on behalf of a world full of electric cars, Mattila is not entirely optimistic about what he sees.
He does say that he sees maturity in the market in 10 or 15 years and that by 2030 electric cars may well make up a significant percentage of cars on the road. But that's a long time from now.
"I'd say I'm more on the skeptical side...at least when I attend conferences and preach to our choir," he explained. "We try to rein in our people (and) look at the barriers and try to address them, rather than focus on what would be good if we had millions and millions of these things being sold."
Still, Project Get Ready has started ongoing conversations with cities like Houston, Raleigh, N.C., Indianapolis, Portland, and Denver and is in unofficial talks with half a dozen more, all in an effort to inform decision-makers about what they have to do to prepare.
Ultimately, Mattila said, Project Get Ready's five-year plan is to put the country on a trajectory to get off of fossil fuels.
"It's hard to be motivated by something that the next generation is going to benefit from," he explained, "but if we can demonstrate (the profit motivation) then maybe people will get on board. We don't want it to be a sacrifice."
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel. 
More thought needs to be given to this. Everyone will be able to recharge at home. Before people are comfortable driving more than 20 miles from home, they have to "see" charging stations at those designations.
You learn a LOT of things in elementary school that are wrong, wrong, wrong. For example, you probably think that planes fly simply due to a pressure difference between the bottom and top of a wing created by passing air, or that gravity is a force, right? Neither is true...
idk what elementary school you went to but mine wasn't teaching aerodynamic properties...
I could see this working in parking garages, having a power-up floor dedicated to plug-ins, but city streets?
Oh, and does anyone really expect a city to properly maintain such charging stations? I've yet to live in a city other than Beverly Hills that can afford to maintain anything properly.
Then you haven't lived in many upscale cities...
Cities provide a million survices very well. They hit problems and can come up short, but more often than not I have been able to depend on the things that my city maintains
Also, it's important to note that the cities doing this can reap the economic awards for selling the energy instead of your money going to the oil companies, and by extension, the Saudis.
And when more Tesla-like models are available (hopefully for less than $104K) we will have figured out how to fast charge large capacity batteries in a 12-hour period without requiring a substation at each connection point.
The real technological challenge is, of course, battery development. It may be decades before we can economically produce cells for vehicles with a range of 200-300 miles.
I don't mean to minimize the importance of the VOLT. From Chevy's data, over 70 percent of commuters drive less than 40 miles round trip. That's perfect for the VOLT. But, then again, $40,000 is a lot of cash for commuting vehicle, IMHO.
Bob Lade
All this is pure green-wash. Sucks big time. Just look at Chevron's new slogan "Will you join us" - that coming from an oil company. Seems the fox is guarding the henhouse!
It's a battery switching station. So the driver pulls into the station, and then in under 2 minutes the battery is removed and replaced with a charged battery. Batteries could be stored and charged during off-peak hours.
Of course, that would require standardization on the part of electric car makers. And I doubt that that standardization is in place.
Don't kid yourself large oil companies have had control of that part of our country for a long time. Our politicians get reelected with money and that has come from places like oil and insurance interests.
Have a good day
Nissan is about to reveal its new EV this weekend. They expect to charge about $30K for it, a reasonable amount considering how cheap EVs are to operate. Evs are so efficient relative to gas vehicles that a a dollar of electricity will take you about 4 times as far as a gallon of gas.
In 1895 a reporter for the Chicago Times-Harold (Charles E. Duryea) said that although the horseless vehicle was a promising mode of transportation, it would remain the toy of the rich until it could compete fully with the horse in every way....
We're now at the same stage with alternative drive train light vehicles. The costs are expensive and there are limitations for pretty much every drivetrain that make them non-competitive when compared to todays ICE technology. But just like at the turn of the last century, the new technology will be refined and eventually displace the older obsolete transportation sources...
So, why don't we all just drop the notion that all this stuff is craap because we can't do wholesale replacement of the light vehicle fleet today, or that this isn't a solution because it won't work in every situation. These are straw men arguments of the worst kind, examples of desire of the perfect being the downfall of real world improvements.
Like Mattila explains, one of the areas that needs work is how to go from low volume demonstration to large scale adoption. Todays transportation infrastructure is vastly complex and to actually do something that will work for many or most users of light vehicles requires some very serious coordination. That's why the series hybrids like the Volt are a good step. They leverage the existing energy distribution infrastructure (both electric and gasoline) to help increase overall energy efficiency of the light vehicle fleet.
A perfect answer, no. A very good step in the right direction? Yes.
Even if more municipalities do create local charging infrastructure, the costs to equip enough of the nation (or any nation) to allow for long distance travel with pure electrics is huge, and the time required to do it is long. This is another reason why the series hybrid is a good step in the right direction.
The Volt is NOT an electric car. It is a serial hybrid and does not require a plug. The plug is there if you want it. That was GM's point in the first place. It still needs an oil and filter change every 3 months, air filter and spark plugs every 6 months, spark plug wires every year, and radiator flush and fill every 2 years.
- by scptt paul July 27, 2009 7:47 PM PDT
- I'm a technical advisor to Project Get Ready and, as a 7 year veteran of driving a highway capable EV made by a top tier OEM (Toyota), I can attest tot he viability of this technology.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(33 Comments)The article was too negative to my thinking. The slowness of the rollout has more to do with battery manufacturing capacity, and cost of those batteries, than with public acceptance. The public is going to love these cars!
What you get is the ability to drive on 100% domestic energy - electricity. You can choose whether to buy that energy from a dirty coal plant, or you can choose to buy it from a renewable source. Many communities already offer this choice from your utility, and if not, then organize and demand it.
The vehicles are smooth, powerful and quiet. These attributes are much appreciated when you're behind the wheel. The difference is so appealing that after driving an EV for no more than a week, you'll never want to drive a smelly gas burner again.
As for access to a plug, if you have a garage or driveway, or you park your car in a parking lot at work, you either already have access, or you can easily get it. Trust me, when your boss is driving an EV, you'll have plugs at work. Think about it, your company can buy a large solar PV system and cover your parking lot with it so all the cars are shaded during the hot sunny days, and the PV generate clean, renewable energy all day long to charge the batteries. Instead of the oil companies getting the revenue from people buying gas, the company sells the energy to the employees for the equivalent of $1/gallon.
If you don't have access to a plug, you'll need to wait till there are enough plugs available where you drive to handle your needs.
The number of EVs coming to market over the next few years are small. Nissan is about to announce their much anticipated vehicle this Sunday. It's due out about the same time as the Volt. Between the two cars, we're only going to see maybe 10,000 at the tail end of 2010. I can guarantee I personally know that many people waiting to buy the car. Once those get into people's neighborhoods and their friends and families see and try them, the demand will grow exponentially.
You don't have to take my word for it, just wait and see for yourself.
Of course, many people will snidely remark that it doesn't fit their needs, but that's fine. The smart people will get them first, the rest eventually as the price of gas continues beyond $4/gallon.