Despite several years of economic woes and rapidly expanding debt, a country commits to plug-in electric vehicles and an aggressive roll-out of charging infrastructure. The Republic of Ireland (you were thinking of someplace else, perhaps?) is installing 1,500 public charging stations this year, which puts the country on pace to have a far and away greater penetration per capita than the United States.

ESB, Ireland’s leading electricity provider, sees great utility in the deployment of PEVs and charging infrastructure as the company increases the percentage of wind and other renewable energy to 40 percent of its total generation. ESB is building out the infrastructure to support the government’s goal of 10 percent of all vehicles being electrified by 2020.

To put it in perspective, Ireland will install 1,500 public charging stations in 2011, while the U.S. will see double that number, despite a population that is more than 60 times greater. When you consider that Ireland has no domestic PEV manufacturers, and just two imported vehicles (the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV) available today, the commitment is all the more impressive. The country will also see 2,000 residential and 30 fast DC (CHAdeMO) charging stations installed by year’s end.

ESB is streamlining EV charging by creating a single-card payment system so that customers can switch electricity providers or charging locations and have the fees consolidated back to their home account. ESB will also use smart charging to manage the equipment so that PEVs can participate in grid services, a step that utilities in the U.S. (with the exception of NRG) have been slow to take.

An agreement between Ireland’s two governments in late October will extend the EV network across the border into Northern Ireland so that the entire Emerald Isle can function as one. As quoted in the Belfast Telegraph, Thierry Sybord, managing director of Renault UK, said, the agreement with Northern Ireland “provides a unique opportunity to explore cross-border collaboration with the Republic of Ireland.”

So PEV drivers anywhere in Ireland will be able to roam freely with their car (like their cell phone) and receive consistent service and billing. This bodes well for consumer interest in PEVs. Other countries such as Spain and Portugal have similar programs in development, and each is likely to have adoption rates higher than in the U.S., where no national plan has been proposed.

It’s encouraging to see the desire to reduce emissions and increase domestic renewable energy production bringing together an area that has seen more than its share of conflict.

Article by John Gartner, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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The U.S. Air Force recently announced that its Los Angeles base would be the first federal facility to replace 100 percent of its general purpose fleet with electric vehicles.

This switch will mean all 40 vehicles owned or leased by the base, including passenger sedans, two-ton trucks and shuttle buses, will be replaced by fully-electric, plug-in hybrid electric, and extended-range electric alternatives. Force protection, tactical and emergency response vehicles will remain exempt for now.

Right now, the base, like the rest of the world, is working on getting a charging infrastructure in place to support these all-electric vehicles. Officials claim that the fleet could be deployed as early as January 2012.

“With gas prices rising and the cost of batteries falling, now is the time to move toward electric vehicles,” said Undersecretary of the Air Force Erin Conaton. “The 100-percent Electric Vehicle Base initiative is a critical first step in this direction and will help guide the way for broader fleet electrification.”

Electrification of Los Angeles AFB’s general purpose fleet is the first implementation step in an ongoing Department of Defense effort to establish strategies for large-scale integration of PEVs. As one of the biggest spenders of taxpayer money, the DoD is in a unique position to increase market demand for and drive down the price of electric vehicles, while also testing and perfecting quick deployment of efficient charging technologies.

Los Angeles AFB is also ideally located to demonstrate a variety of vehicle-to-grid activities. Using vehicle-to-grid technologies, electric vehicles can provide valuable services back to the grid while plugged in. This helps offset the cost of the vehicles and supports the electrical demands on the public grid.

“Worldwide, the DoD has about 200,000 vehicles in its fleet, so there’s a whole lot of opportunity for us to look at creative ways to advance PEVs and other emerging technologies,” said Dr. Camron Gorguinpour, the special assistant to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and logistics.

Article by Beth Buczynski, appearing courtesy Crisp Green.

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The U.S. Department of Energy announced last week the 16 winning projects in 24 states that will receive funding for projects that support community planning for plug-in electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. The projects won funding as part of the Clean Cities initiative, a competitive program that weighs progress, preparedness and potential for lasting change before doling out money to a fraction of the public-private partnerships that apply for it.

The competitive grant model, which has been used for everything from school funding for states to community colleges looking to retool with the job training programs of the future, strays away from private risk and focuses more on proven track records in public-private cooperation.

“These one-year projects will help communities address their specific needs, which include updating permitting processes, revising codes, training municipal personnel, promoting public awareness, or developing incentives, and each will create a plan that will be publicly available so that other stakeholders can learn best practices.”

Advanced vehicles such as electric cars and those powered by fuels like hydrogen and biodiesel face an uphill battle as the cards that make up the current fuel distribution infrastructure are stacked against them — a fact that is accepted by advanced vehicle supporters and detractors alike.

But where small government ideologues (like many of the Tea Party-favored Congressional representatives now in D.C.) and Keynesian demand-side government-investment types differ is that the former say emerging technologies should have to compete in the free market and that ‘government shouldn’t pick winners’. But the demand-side folks argue that our transportation system, dominated by the interests of well-entrenched oil and auto industries, does anything but create an even playing field for new technologies to compete. And it is with that guiding philosophy that the Obama administration has not only directed federal funding to electric vehicles and advanced fuel research, it has also been pumping money into clean energy and energy efficiency enterprises, not always with resounding success, however, as we saw last week with the folding of Solyndra, a solar company that received millions in loan guarantees from the U.S. Government.

Article by Timothy Hurst, appearing courtesy ecopolitology.

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I recently set out to look into all electric car sharing programs, like the one recently started in San Diego by car2go. After a little research into the program – run by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daimler, stocked with Daimler Smart Fortwo EVs, and using ECOtality charging infrastructure – I became even more interested in the diversifying products of auto manufacturers. A number of auto OEMs around the world are starting to look like one-stop-shop transportation companies, investing in car sharing programs, transportation applications, and public transit. What are the catalysts for such diversification and what do these new mobility services achieve for auto OEMs?

If we follow the almighty dollar and look at the group with growing buying power around the world, it’s Generation Y. This tech-savvy and highly connected group is in the midst of starting their careers, something they are redefining with their own creativity. We (I say “we” because I too am a member of the Generation Y clan) sit on the cusp of change in countless sectors: the power industry, personal computing, and transportation, and others. We approach business and community in a different way than our predecessors – our childhoods spent online, texting, and chatting nurtured that. There is an expectation of choice and independence like never before. The transportation needs and desires of our demographic are a reflection of all these characteristics.

I have good reason to believe auto manufacturers are paying attention. Gen Y’ers are an underlying force in the urbanization trend around the world, bringing with us a desire for personalization in the products and services we use, and the ability to share our experiences conveniently and constantly. While it seems daunting to design products and services that fit all of these criteria, it appears that auto OEMs are expanding their product lines and engaging with service offerings to do just that. From Toyota’s youth division to Ford’s partnership with Pandora, and BMW’s investment in transportation-related smart phone applications, auto manufacturers are attempting to dodge the bullet of obsolescence by embracing transportation in all its forms, and make them appealing to up-and-coming Gen Y consumers. This concept of transportation services – car sharing, parking assistance, and even city guides – looks like the commoditization of transportation, which will change the way we think about mobility, and particularly sustainable mobility. Or perhaps they are just playing catch-up with Gen Y’ers take on it.

So how do auto manufacturers make money if they don’t sell cars? Well, they’re not going to stop selling vehicles; they are going to offer a suite of transportation services to accommodate the wide variety of mobility needs that people actually have. BMW has committed significant resources, to the tune of about $100 million, to mobility services. This includes everything from electric vehicle car sharing to applications for mobile devices that support congestion mitigation and some that aim to diminish parking woes. Daimler’s car2go, which recently launched the first all electric car sharing program in the United States, is aiming to eventually make all of its car sharing programs interoperable, granting subscribers mobility across the country without any of the constraints of owning a vehicle.

These kinds of programs target inhabitants in what are quickly becoming the world’s mega-cities, where car ownership can be neither practical nor desirable. But where there are fewer personal vehicle sales, car companies are identifying other opportunities for revenue. Car sharing programs charge an annual membership and then for use by the minute or hour for service. In addition to this revenue stream, auto OEMs also gain a guaranteed customer for their vehicles (Daimler requires car2go to purchase the EVs in its fleet) and an audience for their other products, hybrids, electric vehicles, and ICE vehicles with more advanced features. Consumers gain risk-free opportunities to test new technologies. Perhaps by the time Gen Y’ers have kids or decide they need a vehicle, they will be more comfortable buying an all-electric vehicle thanks to their EV car sharing experiences.

If Gen Y’ers (or anyone for that matter) still decides to purchase a vehicle, they may make decisions based on which in-car services are available. Ford is integrating Pandora with ten of the company’s vehicles and two Lincoln products, so drivers can access their custom online radio stations and stream them in the vehicle. The same service is available in 2011 BMW models. At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, Ford announced the introduction of a Twitter application in its vehicles which the vehicle reads Tweets aloud to the driver. It appears that Ford is treating their vehicles as yet another platform for the internet and connectivity. While services such as these have yet to prove their full value, they are squarely aimed at the tendencies and preferences of Gen Y’ers.

Auto manufacturers around the world are also embracing other forms of more sustainable transportation. The market for electric, two-wheel vehicles is growing much more quickly in parts of Asia and Europe, and a bicycle sharing program with those could be a lucrative next step. The University of Tennessee has tested such a service. You will also find BMW involved with designing public transit systems through the design consultancy DesignworksUSA. (They have been tapped to design the future BART subway system in San Francisco). As transportation preferences change for Gen Y’ers and others across the globe, it appears that auto OEMs are positioning themselves to be go-to providers for all kinds of mobility needs, including sustainable mobility that might not involve traditional ICE vehicles. With public and private transportation accounting for roughly 20 percent of an average city’s greenhouse gas emissions, innovative approaches to transportation may also lead to partnerships with major cities around the world. Smart Cities projects around the world are demonstrating many variations of intelligent and sustainable transportation systems. This may be just the tip of the iceberg as far as the future of transportation goes – keep an eye out for Pike Research’s upcoming report on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Article by Brittany Gibson, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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There is general industry agreement that electric vehicle charging needs to be smart enough to respond to the changing conditions on the grid (to limit the impact on the grid) and to changing prices (to maximize the savings of driving electric). The looming question that will help to shape the ultimate success of EVs is, “Will that smart charging be enabled through smart meters, or through other devices?”

The investment in smart charging management hardware and software from utilities, EV charging companies and service parties will reach $111 million in the U.S. by 2015, as forecast by Pike Research’s Electric Vehicle Information Technology Systems report.

EV IT Investment by Segment, United States: 2010-2015 Automakers and third-party services companies are developing alternative technologies to smart meters, such as leveraging the EV charging equipment and connecting via the web or wireless communications. For the self-interested reason of having a role in the communications (and revenue) streams, as well as to not be dependent on utilities’ smart grid infrastructure deployments, this option makes much sense. For example, companies such as Coulomb Technologies are including smart meters in their EV charging equipment so that vehicle charging can be metered separately if a smart meter doesn’t exist in the home or office.

But many utilities want to leverage their huge investment in smart (AMI) meters and make them the hub for all electricity consumption, including EVs. Recent announcements reinforce that there is no clear winner today – and may never be.

For example, British Gas is taking a prominent role in EV charging infrastructure and marrying it to the company’s smart meters. The company, which serves as a utility, has become Renault’s charging equipment partner for its EV models, which follows on a similar deal with Nissan. The smart meters will be used to provide the time of use tariffs and communications between the grid and British Gas’ charging equipment.

Taking a different approach is Siemens, which partnered with Tendril Networks to market the Tendril Connect home energy management platform to utilities. Siemens is developing commercial and residential EV charging equipment, and it is likely that Siemens would add interoperability with Tendril’s platform to enable data sharing and interaction with smart grid equipment. Tendril’s platform is agnostic on how the data gets moved, as it is open to using smart meters or a broadband connection.

As EVs themselves gain more intelligence and can communicate with utilities through smart meters, the need for the intelligence in the charging equipment is greatly reduced. This isn’t a good trend for EV equipment vendors, who may see a portion of the business opportunity quickly dwindle. The integration of EVs into the smart grid will be one of many topics around EVs and infrastructure that will be discussed during the Plug-in 2011 conference which begins on July 19 in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Article by John Gartner, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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Last week, I was fortunate to meet with two of the people driving Los Angeles’ transition to plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). Beth Jines, the Director of Sustainability for the City of Los Angeles, and Sarah Potts, City Director of Los Angeles for the Clinton Climate Initiative, are working together to navigate the complex issues of vehicle electrification and getting support from consumers and the private sector. They discussed how and why L.A. will be a leader in PEV adoption.

Here are the top reasons why this L.A. marriage will last longer than most:

- Air quality: The City is out of compliance with the federal Clean Air Act and cleaning up transportation is one of the most cost-effective methods of reducing the negative impact of carbon emissions on health.

- Commuting pattern: The majority of L.A.-area drivers (70 percent) have a commute of 30 miles or less, so even battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) have more than enough range to get drivers to and from work on a single charge. Because so much of that time is spent in stop-and-go or stop-and-stay-stopped traffic, the financial savings from using PEVs that shut off when the vehicle would have been idling are maximized. During a typical 8-mile 40-minute commute, PEV drivers would be spending pennies for power instead of dollars on gas.

- Vehicle ownership: According to a survey of Angelinos by the Luskin Center for Innovation at UCLA, 60 percent of residents already have two or more cars, so using a PEV or BEV as a commuting car while having an ICE vehicle for the long trips does not require a huge shift in behavior. The city also has a very high ownership rate of hybrid vehicles and consumers who have experience with vehicle electrification are more likely to move up to a PEV.

- Driving culture: L.A. folks love their cars and many of them would not likely switch to public transit even if the meager system currently in place were significantly expanded.

- Publicly-owned utility: The Los Angeles Department of Power and Water has established Time of Use (TOU) pricing rates for charging EVs which will encourage off-peak charging, which will minimize the strain on the power grid. PEV purchasers will be provided with a smart meter if the EV charging equipment does not include one. Getting utility buy-in is essential to a positive EV ownership experience.

All of these positive factors contribute to Pike Research’s prediction that through the end of 2017, nearly 100,000 PEVs will be sold (or leased) in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana area. PEV sales will grow from 3,723 in 2011 to 22,631 in 2017, for a CAGR of 35.1 percent.

The L.A. metro area ranks second only to New York in projected PEV sales in the United States, according to the Pike Research Electric Vehicle Forecasts report.

However, L.A. also faces a significant challenge in electrifying the passenger vehicle fleet – providing readily-accessible charging infrastructure to its residents. In Los Angeles, 65 percent of families live in multi-unit dwellings, and 20 percent of those surveyed by UCLA park their cars on the street. Providing convenient charging to this “mid-adopter” group is critical to the acceptance of PEVs. This can be accomplished on two fronts – by streamlining the process for permitting electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) installation in condos and apartment complexes, and investing in public infrastructure in the places people park.

The city is requiring that builders run the conduit to enable PEV charging in 5 percent of parking spaces in new buildings. The metro agency is reviewing the installation of EVSEs for folks who drive to a bus or train station. In addition, Los Angeles needs to integrate EVSEs in parking lots, and encourage retailers and employers to offer EVSEs for those without convenient access to charging in or near their homes if the city is to reach its goals for vehicle electrification.

Article by John Gartner, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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I want to call readers’ attention to the whole car-sharing phenomenon – particularly as it applies to the deployment of electric vehicles, and this excellent article that tackles some of the issues.

There is no doubt that car-sharing in dense urban environments like Boston and San Francisco is going to do quite well. I only wish that it existed when I lived in Washington DC in the 1970s, and spent half my life trying to find a parking space into which to shoehorn my car.

While there is a natural fit for EVs in the car-sharing space (as some of the motivation for not owning a car is eco-friendliness), there are significant problems associated with charging. Unlike filling up one’s car with gas, charging takes time, thus disabling the car from the network for hours at a time. While the EV owner can simply charge at home every night, this is tricky in the car-sharing environment.

I’m afraid this may be one of these ideas that sounds good on paper, but may prove tricky in the real world, given the charging infrastructure that exists here and now. Good article though; I hope you’ll check it out.

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Way back 18 months ago the Department of Energy announced that with its financial support, a company that most people had never heard of would install more than 12,000 electric vehicle chargers in a few select cities across the country. This prompted great interest in EVSE (electric vehicle supply equipment) vendor Ecotality, which as administrator of the program would be using its own equipment.

Fast forward to Q1 2011, (initial deployments were originally scheduled for summer 2010) and the pieces are just now falling into place for these installations to begin in earnest. Ecotality achieved UL certification for its Blink EVSEs in January 2011), and manufacturing partner Roush in February 2011 began to manufacture the Blink charging equipment in volume. 2011 will see most of the chargers installed in states including California, Arizona, Tennessee, Oregon, Washington, Texas and the District of Columbia.

Installing EV charging infrastructure isn’t just about finding the homes and buildings and safely connecting the power. The greater challenge is in having the information about the vehicle charging being captured and transmitted.

The EV Project is a test bed to understand how EVs will impact both the grid and overall household power consumption, and the charging data will be wired and wirelessly sent to a centralized repository.

To that end, during the past few weeks Ecotality has formed partnerships with Sprint to streamline wireless communications, and with Cisco to enable the Blink chargers to interface with home Cisco’s home energy management system.

Connecting EV charging with the smart grid will be a technical challenge due to a lack of standards and utilities that aren’t quite ready to invest. Pike Research estimates that the investment in IT to enable smart charging will total $1.2 billion by 2015.

Ecotality also received a $2.87 million contract play a similar administrative role for the SF Bay Area Air Quality Management District. This project will include 20 “fast” DC chargers that initially will be compatible with EVs from Nissan and Mitsubshi that have special ports installed. These DC chargers will include 42-inch display screen, which seems an excessive use of public funds to people who have yet to move to a flat screen in their homes.

Ecotality may also be connected its charging network to equipment from ABB, a global player in building power equipment that invested $10 million in Ecotality earlier this year.

Many of Ecotality’s chargers will be idle most of the time as the dozens of people in each metro area who are able to get a Nissan Leaf or Chevrolet Volt this year are expected to primarily charge at home. Lead by Ecotality and fellow California companies Coulomb Technologies and AeroVironment, the EVSE market is now charged and ready to go.

Article by John Gartner, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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Urbanization in the 21st century is creating a set of new challenges for governance. How will national, state/provincial, and city governments effectively provide vital services to citizens? And as a greater portion of the world’s population gets connected through smart phones and other slick new data-sharing devices, how will people access those services?

In the next 20 years, the world population will grow from 6.9 to 8.3 billion people. However, the urban population will grow even faster, from 3.5 to 5.0 billion people, over the same time period. That means the urban population is growing an average of 1.2 percent per year and cities must welcome 75 million new people to the neighborhood every single year. That’s the population of five Mumbais added to cities annually. So city governments around the world are starting to look for innovative ways to provide crucial municipal services.

Major software and telecom vendors have noticed this and have started to develop “smart city” platforms that will allow municipal governments to manage a wide variety of public services, from utilities to education to healthcare to public safety, in new ways. There’s no standard recipe for a smart city, but the general idea is to centralize the management of municipal services, thereby making them easier and less expensive to manage, especially as demand for those services grows. For example, the city of Chicago worked with IBM and the network provider Firetide Networks to deploy a network of videos and sensors that will help Chicago multiply its ability to monitor and control crime beyond its existing police force as demands on Chicago’s police force increase.

Of course, sustainability is a major driver of the smart city movement worldwide. However, in this case, it’s a slightly different breed of sustainability than we typically see. On a basic level, smart cities are usually a component part of larger urban initiatives to integrate smart grid technologies (such as smart meters), renewable energy, and electric vehicle charging infrastructure, which have an obvious role in curbing energy consumption and carbon emissions. But on a deeper level, the smart city phenomenon represents a move toward making cities more attractive to families, businesses, and industries – sustainable in the sense that they can maintain a high quality-of-life for residents in the long term.

There’s also a competitive undercurrent to smart cities. For example, Amsterdam is looking to use its smart city platform to cut carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2025, a feat that would place it ahead of many other cities in the Netherlands and Europe and, perhaps, attract an increasingly sustainability-minded population. The early adopters hope that, by getting on the smart cities train early, they’ll be in a position to provide top-quality municipal services and, hence, a better quality of life for citizens, in the coming decades.

While the smart city concept evokes a few common themes across all projects (sustainability, quality-of-life, economic development, and competitiveness), there are many different sizes and shapes to smart city platform, which I’ll be discussing in greater depth in subsequent posts.

Article by Eric Bloom, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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The first Chevrolet Volts, Nissan Leafs, and Smart EDs were delivered in December, but in the annals of history 2011 will be remembered as the year that electric vehicles (EVs) arrived. EVs for sale to consumers will dominate the headlines throughout the year as average Americans begin to recognize EVs as the roll down the road.

Because of the stalled start in the 1990s, when consumers were tempted by and then denied access to GM’s EV1 and other EVs, every milestone during the year will be magnified in the media. By year’s end nearly 50,000 EVs will be plugging in at garages and lots across America. The arrival of new models from automakers Think, Coda, Mitsubishi, Mini, Toyota and Chevrolet (a few of which were delayed from 2010) will give consumers more options and be closely tracked.

Any missteps – and there will be some – will be cause celebre for the EV doubters who don’t believe in or desire a move away fossil fuels. Humans have always been fallible in designing and operating vehicles, and replacing liquid fuel with electrons won’t change that. While considerable safeguards have been put in place to prevent accidents when charging a vehicle, somewhere someone will find a creative way for failure, and we can expect considerable fanfare by the naysayers when this inevitably occurs.

Any of the important trends we’ve identified at Pike Research for 2011 will be the slow subsiding of the catch phrase “range anxiety.” Range anxiety is the supposed fear that both prevents consumers from wanting to buy an EV with a 80-100 mile range or from driving said car very far for fear that the batteries will run out, leaving the driver stranded. Range anxiety has been overblown, underestimating drivers’ ability to monitor their battery charge level through the various dashboard displays and auditory prompts.

While like EVs, the rollout of charging infrastructure has been slower than expected off the line, installations of public charging infrastructure such as the government-subsidized EV Project and Charge Point America will see hundreds of charging stations installed across many of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas.

The availability of public charging equipment will actual outpace the need for vehicles to plug-in, which will result in many charge spots idled for most of the day, or even days at a time. While this will be the subject of derision as a waste of taxpayer money, EVs outpacing the charging infrastructure could result in a serious setback as the minority of drivers who plan to regularly charge their vehicles away from home might otherwise wait to make a purchase.

The electric vehicles’ second act will be a top media story throughout the year, even at the box office with the release of Revenge of the Electric Car mid-year. Many consumers will get their first direct exposure to EVs by renting a car from one of the many rental agencies that will make emissions-free driving a premium service. Fleets including delivery vehicles and taxis will be critical for collecting data about EV performance and to build confidence that this time around, EVs are here to stay.

Article by John Gartner, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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