CarbonDay Automotive

Join us in Copley Square for an open air event showcasing electric vehicles and public information on Wednesday September 15th. Copley Square – Back Bay, on the Boylston Street side of Copley Square.

Carbon Day — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:50:20 +0000

The event will be held from 10 am to 3:00 pm.

Personal hybrid and all electric transportation of the near future, from trucks to bicycles, will be on display in Copley Square. Creators, manufacturer’s representatives, and owners will be on hand to answer questions and hand out information about their vehicles. Learn about the future city network of charging infrastructure that will be available as well as what Smart Neighborhoods and the Smart Grid can do. Participants include MIT Electric Vehicle Team, ConVerdant Vehicles, National Grid, Wheego, Vectrix Corp., Segway of Boston, MyBike, and Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources – Clean Cities Coalition.

Free to the public, we invite area schools, businesses, and all interested people to come see what your electric personal transportation options look like.

Sponsored by Boston University Center for Energy and Environmental Studies and Clean Energy and Environmental Sustainability Initiative jointly with the Electric Vehicle Urban Infrastructure Study (EVUIS).

Elk Horn, Iowa: an Oasis for Electric Cars

Carbon Day — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:48:28 +0000

Here’s something you probably didn’t know about the town of Elk Horn, Iowa: it has America’s highest concentration of electric vehicle charging stations.

The Danish windmill in Elkhorn, behind a sign for a charging station

“Highest concentration” awards are relatively easy to come by when your population is 650. (Elk Horn also has the highest concentration of Danish immigrants; its residents say its interest in alternative energy derives from the homeland.) The town has four electric charging stations, one at a solar-powered service station, one in a parking lot, one at the hotel, and one by the Danish windmill, the town’s greatest tourist attraction.

The charging stations came to Elk Horn last November thanks to Mike Howard, a 57-year-old local entrepreneur who owns two businesses that test and calibrate alternative energy devices. You might say that he is so far ahead of the curve that, looking back, the curve can’t even be seen. Elk Horn itself only has four purely electric vehicles, and those all belong to Howard’s own businesses. “We’re our own best customers,” admits Trevor Schroeter, a project manager at World Cal, one of Howard’s companies. The chargers cost about $7,000 apiece, but a charge runs no more than $3.

While the idea of one charger per car might appear “ludicrous,” says Schroeter, consider this: In the vast stretch of Interstate 80 running between Chicago and Denver, there was nowhere to charge an electric vehicle, unless you were going to bum some electricity off a stranger. Now there is. Electric charging stations can be found all over the state of California (the Bay Area alone has about 130 listings on this site), but in the Midwest, Elk Horn is an electric oasis.

Maybe that’s why Howard and Schroeter are already planning on installing upgraded stations within the next month, capable of reducing the charging time from six hours down to three. They’re also working with partners in Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska to expand the EV infrastructure there. The hope is that each new station will help diminish the “range anxiety” surrounding electric vehicles, which in their smaller and cheaper incarnations sometimes only get 40 miles to a charge.

Never mind that the cars aren’t there yet. There’s a saying about this, already associated with rural Iowa: If you build it, they will come.

Firms aim to raise capital as electric car market begins to charge

Carbon Day — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:22:34 +0000

Clean-energy startup AllCell Technologies has been ahead of its time, but demand is catching up.

So much so that AllCell is shifting its focus from revenue growth to profitability, co-founder and Chief Executive Said Al-Hallaj said. Being profitable will make the company more attractive to investors and lenders, so it can raise the capital it needs for further expansion.

“We have been very lucky in the past six months, but now we need to hire more people,” he said.

Launched in 2001, AllCell offers a patented technology that absorbs the heat generated from lithium batteries, making them safer and doubling their lifespan, Al-Hallaj said. The batteries are being used to power electric scooters and bikes but soon will be in electric and plug-in hybrid automobiles and trucks, he said. The company has been selling to the military since 2008 and is working with top automakers, he said.

AllCell also has developed the battery-pack technology for solar-powered electric vehicle charging stations being used by the city of Chicago to power a fleet of electric cars with energy from the sun. It worked with Carbon Day Automotive, a 2-year-old Midwest distributor of Coulomb Technologies’ electric charging stations.

Carbon Day Automotive understands the challenge of being ahead of the clean-energy market. Few people drive electric cars, yet to get others to do so will require charging stations in convenient locations, said Brian Levin, vice president.

“If there’s one thing you can bet, electric vehicles will be hitting the streets more than leaving the streets,” Levin said. “By 2012, every major automaker has announced plans to roll out (electric) vehicles.”

For businesses that want to go green, installing a charging station that workers can use while at work makes a lot of sense, Levin said. What’s more, tax incentives are encouraging adoption. Companies that buy and install a charging station can get 50 percent back in tax savings, Levin said, while consumers who buy electric cars may be eligible to get a $7,500 tax credit.

The tax credit lowers the base price of Tesla Motors‘ plug-in electric Roadster to $101,500, while the Model S starts at about $50,000. The Nissan LEAF will start around $25,000 after the tax credit when it debuts later this year.

To prepare for the demand, Carbon Day last month installed two of three electric stations planned forMillennium Park garages. It hopes to have 500 charging stations in the Chicago area by the end of the year, Levin said, and has been teaming up with shopping centers, parking garage operators, property owners, municipalities, utility companies, and architecture and planning firms.

The company doesn’t stop with electric- or solar-powered stations. It recently installed a wind-generated charging station at an office building in Highland Park, Levin said.

With 100 million vehicles on the road in the U.S., converting even a fraction of them each year to plug-in hybrid would significantly reduce oil dependence and emissions, said Robert Anderson, chairman of Chicago-based Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies.

The startup uses technology developed by Illinois Institute of Technology professor Ali Emadi to convert existing vehicles, such as the Ford F-150 truck, to plug-in hybrid, doubling the fuel efficiency and cutting about 4,500 pounds of carbon dioxide, Anderson said. While the company’s prototypes prove the technology works, finding the capital to increase the business has been tough, he said.

“It’s one thing to say, ‘I think it’s a great idea.’ It’s another to say, ‘Here’s $50,000 or $500,000,’” Anderson said.

Anderson is looking for about $5 million to expand beyond prototypes to fleet applications. The company is exploring strategic partnerships with auto manufacturers and suppliers, as well as venture capital funding, foundation money or government grants.

“We’re in discussions with a number of groups and a number of mechanisms to do what it takes,” he said.

When the economy plummeted in 2008, AllCell diversified its business model by providing engineering services and research and development to manufacturers that wanted to produce electric vehicles but didn’t have the technology in house, said Al-Hallaj, who stepped down as a chemical engineering professor at IIT in 2008 to run AllCell full time.

“We focus on coming up with high-tech engineering solutions for customers who need batteries, rather than us driving the market,” he said.

The shift in strategy was the right decision given the economic climate. “Companies started to know us and our technology,” which won an industry innovation award at the Society of Automotive Engineers Congress 2010 show in April, Al-Hallaj said. “We started growing, and we’re hopeful to break even this year,” he said.

The company generated nearly $1 million in revenue last year, Al-Hallaj said, despite the tough economy. It hopes to achieve $100 million in annual sales by 2015 but will need funding, he said.

The company has received $2.2 million in two angel funding rounds during the past four years, plus a $200,000 loan through the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity’s Participation Loan Program, Al-Hallaj said. Now it’s looking for more investment dollars or a loan to expand.

“We have purchase orders from customers who are saying, ‘When can you deliver to us?’” he said. “We have to ask them to give us time. We have to figure out how to finance these” orders.

Coulomb’s ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations Successfully Complete Testing at Nissan’s Engineering Facility in Farmington Hills, MI.

Carbon Day — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:53:53 +0000

CAMPBELL, Calif, June 23, 2010 Coulomb Technologies today announced that its ChargePoint® Networked Charging Stations for electric vehicles has an Underwriter Laboratories listed CT2100 product family that is compatible with the Nissan LEAF. Coulomb, which has the largest established installation of networked charging stations worldwide, successfully completed extensive compatibility testing with the Nissan LEAF at the company’s engineering facility in Farmington Hills, MI. All Nissan LEAFs will be able to charge at any 240v CT2100 ChargePoint charging station in the United States.

“The Nissan LEAF is the first all-electric, zero-emission car designed for the mass market and we want our customers to know that they can use any of Coulomb’s public ChargePoint charging stations to fuel their cars,” said Eric Noziere, vice president, Corporate Planning, Nissan North America. “Successful completion of tests with the Nissan LEAF and the ChargePoint station proved that this is a safe, reliable and convenient way for EV drivers to fuel their cars. We are also looking forward to collaborating on data interchange with the public ChargePoint Network.”

“Our compatibility testing with Nissan will ensure that their customers’ EV experience is a positive one,” said Richard Lowenthal CEO of Coulomb Technologies. “ChargePoint is rapidly becoming the brand of choice and we will soon be seeing thousands of our stations across the country. As these electric vehicles arrive we do not want there to be any question about vehicle compatibility. We are thrilled to have our first UL listed charging station that has been tested with the Nissan LEAF for compatibility.”

ChargePoint Network stations are network-enabled, capable of reporting energy usage and communicating over the network with Software Application Services and Network Support Services to activate capabilities such as:

Providing open access for all drivers using any standards-based RFID card
Generating revenue for station owners to offset electricity and maintenance costs
Sending SMS or Email notifications to drivers for charging complete or interruptions in charging
Controlling access to eliminate energy theft and to enhance safety
Integrating with the utility Smart Grid for demand side management and preferred pricing

Charging station owners can set their own prices for charging through the Flex Billing™ system. The Flex Billing system enables station owners to set pricing as a function of time of day, calendar date, and driver - much like a parking meter. Those same stations can also be configured to provide “free” access to EV drivers.

Nissan North America

In North America, Nissan’s operations include automotive design, engineering, consumer and corporate financing, sales and marketing, distribution and manufacturing. Nissan is dedicated to improving the environment under the Nissan Green Program 2010, whose key priorities are reducing CO2 emissions, cutting other emissions and increasing recycling. More information on the Nissan LEAF and zero emissions can be found at www.nissanusa.com.

About Coulomb Technologies, Inc.

Coulomb Technologies is a leader in electric vehicle charging station infrastructure with networked charging stations installed in municipalities and organizations worldwide. Coulomb provides a vehicle-charging infrastructure, with an open system driver network: the ChargePoint Network provides multiple web-based portals for Hosts, Fleet managers, Drivers, and Utilities, and ChargePoint Networked Charging Stationsranging in capability from 120 Volt to 240 Volt AC charging and up to 500 Volt DC charging. For more information, follow Coulomb on Twitter attwitter.com/coulombevi. To request a charging station in your area, visit http://www.mychargepoint.net/request-station.php. To download the ChargePoint iPhone App, click here.

Coulomb gets its big break, partners with Siemens to charge up electric cars

Carbon Day — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:39:46 +0000

Coulomb Technologies, maker of networked charging stations for plug-in vehicles, has been growing steadily, rolling out its equipment one city or region at a time. Its technology is promising, but mass adoption still seemed far off. That may have changed today, with theannouncement that the company has partnered with energy engineering giant Siemens, to co-market charging products.

Siemens has an extensive web of relationships with utilities, energy vendors, city and state governments, and automotive companies. Now these contacts will be at Coulomb’s disposal as well, giving them access to new types of deals. In particular, Siemens will be able to supply utilities, municipalities and the like with Coulomb equipment that can monitor energy consumption, run demand response programs, and provide accurate billing.

Siemens has its hands in almost every segment of the emerging cleaner, more efficient smart grid. It’s involved in energy monitoring systems, as well as solar and turbine development, and storage innovations. The deal with Coulomb to market its smart grid products alongside the ChargePoint EV charging stations, gives Siemens a new foothold in advanced automotive infrastructure, where it hasn’t been so strong yet.

Pike Research, which concentrates on cleantech, recently released a report that electric vehicle charging infrastructure could represent $297 million in new business in the U.S. alone and $1.5 billion globally in the next five years. This is a big market, and all of the corporate interests swooping in on the smart grid as it heats up are sure to get involved, including General Electric, Cisco Systems, and IBM, among others. Microsoft has already sliced into the pie, partnering with Ford to manage charging for its all-electric Ford Focus due out this year.

The alliance with Coulomb is very representative of Siemens’ approach to other pieces of the smart grid, including microgrids, smart metering, and grid-scale storage. It usually partners with smaller venture-backed players closer to the ground in each of these areas, just like Coulomb, in hopes of expediting distribution of its technology, bundled with what is already being rolled out.

The vehicle charging company already has ambitious roll-out plans in the hopper, stating earlier this month that it plans to install 4,600 new ChargePoint stations for plug-in vehicles in homes and commercial centers across the U.S.

Coulomb, based in Campbell, Calif., last raised funds in February, bringing in $14 million in a second round of capital. Before that, it raised a $3.75 million first round from Estag Capital in January 2009.

Nissan Leaf unexpectedly drawing in the oldies; 84% are over 40

Carbon Day — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:06:51 +0000

Nissan Leaf EV – Click above for high-res image gallery

A lot is happening over at Nissan’s Oppama facility in Japan this week. Test drives of the production Leaf are underway as we speak and Nissan is slowly letting some more information trickle out. From those detailed range numbers to the pedestrian warning whistle and now even some demographic info, Nissan is letting it all hang out. Looking at those early demographic numbers for Japan, we discover that the game-changing Leaf is an unexpected hit among older buyers.

According to Nissan’s announcement, older buyers have shown a strong interest in the electric car during theLeaf’s pre-order period. In fact, more than one out of three (34 percent) potential buyers are over the age of 60. In addition, buyers between the age of 40 and 60 account for 50 percent of pre-orders. When you add it all up, an unexpected 84 percent of potential Leaf buyers are over the age of 40. Here’s something that might be equally as surprising: fewer than five percent of Leaf buyers are in their 20s. Why does the car of the future appeal to the older crowd while being shunned by the younger generation of tech-savvy kids? Who knows, but we’d guess it has something to do with the price tag that puts it out of reach for your typical compact car buyer.

Coulomb Technologies Achieves UL Listing from Underwriters Laboratories for ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations for Electric Vehicles

Carbon Day — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:21:36 +0000

Now Available and Shipping: ChargePoint UL Listed EV Charging Stations

CAMPBELL, Calif., June 9, 2010 – Coulomb Technologies today announced that its ChargePoint® CT2100 charging station has been certified to Underwriters Laboratories’ new requirements UL Subject 2594. UL Subject 2594 is the safety requirement covering Electric Vehicle (EV) supply equipment, and Coulomb’s ChargePoint CT2100 product family is one of the first charging stations to be evaluated to this standard. In addition, the CT2100 is certified to UL 1998, UL 991, UL 2231-1 and UL 2231-2 standards. The CT2100 family of charging stations supports both Level II 208/240V, 30A charging (via the SAE J1772™ connector) and Level I 120V, 16A charging via a standard NEMA 5-20 outlet thereby offering the ability to charge almost any EV. UL evaluates representative products, components, materials and systems for compliance to specific requirements, and authorizes manufacturers of compliant products to display the UL Mark on those products.

“Being able to display the UL Mark on our product is significant for many reasons,” said Richard Lowenthal, CEO of Coulomb Technologies. “UL is a world leader in product safety testing and certification and adherence to their safety standards is required by many municipalities, utilities and businesses. Coulomb’s ChargePoint CT2100 is in high demand in part because it is the only charging station that has a Level I/II UL Listing that is shipping today. This technology is proven, certified and available.”

The CT2100 product family and all ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations are network-enabled, capable of reporting energy usage and communicating over the network with Software Application Services and Network Support Services to activate capabilities such as:

Providing open access for all drivers using any standards-based RFID card
Generating revenue for station owners to offset electricity and maintenance costs
Sending SMS or Email notifications to drivers for charging complete or interruptions in charging
Controlling access to eliminate energy theft and to enhance safety
Integrating with the utility Smart Grid for demand side management and preferred pricing

“In 2009 UL led the development of a new set of safety requirements in anticipation of a growing market for electric vehicles, infrastructure and accompanying products,” said Gary Savin, UL’s Vice President and General Manager for Global Power and Controls business. “Coulomb is one of the early pioneers in having their product listed to UL Subject 2594. This is a significant milestone for UL, Coulomb and the industry as a whole as it paves the way for new EV infrastructure in the United States.”

Coulomb Technologies to Build $37 Million Electric Vehicle Charging Network

Carbon Day — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:17:46 +0000

Campbell, Calif. — Coulomb Technologies, a developer of electric vehicle charging stations, has been selected to build around 5,000 charging facilities in nine metro regions of the U.S. under a $37 million program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as Ford and Chevrolet.

The nine cities selected for the “ChargePoint America” program include Austin, Texas, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Fla., Sacramento, Calif., the San Jose/San Francisco Bay Area, Redmond, Wash., and Washington DC.

More than 1000 public charging stations will be installed under the program by December 2010 and the remaining stations will be installed by September 2011, according toCoulomb.

ChargePoint Network stations are network-enabled and capable of reporting energy usage and communicating over the network with software application services and network support services.

Charging stations owners can set their own prices for charging through the system, which allows station owners to set pricing as a function of time of day, calendar date, and driver. The stations can also be configured to provide “free” access to EV drivers.

ChargePoint America will offer both home and public charging stations to individuals and businesses. Businesses interested in receiving public charging stations can visit the ChargePoint America web site below, as can individuals to receive more information about qualifying to receive a home charging station.

Millennium offers electric plug-ins

Carbon Day — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:16:35 +0000

ectric car owners can now power up at Millennium Garages downtown.

With automakers unveiling electric battery cars over the next year and a Tesla dealership open downtown, Millennium decided to invest in electric car charging stations.

“We’re trying to stay ahead of the curve here by making this available,” said Millennium spokesman Matt Whitmire.

The stations are available for free until Aug. 1. After that, the cost to charge will be $1 to $2 per hour.

Cars that can use the “plug-in” station include the Tesla and the upcoming 2011 Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf. It takes a Tesla six to eight hours to charge from a completely dead battery at the Millennium Garage, according to Whitmire.

Tesla, V-Vehicle reps to discuss future of automobiles in New York museum

Carbon Day — Wed, 26 May 2010 19:57:36 +0000

Tesla, V-Vehicle reps to discuss future of automobiles in New York museum

by Eric Loveday (RSS feed) on May 26th, 2010 at 11:01AM

Over the last 100 years, motor vehicles have been transformed from something akin to a horse-drawn carriage with a motor to, essentially, a supercomputer on wheels. While the automobile has certainly come a long way, evolution will continue to change vehicles in unforeseeable ways. What ways? Well, that’s what a panel of experts will discuss at an upcoming Museum of the City of New York event. The panel, appropriately called The Next Generation of the Automobile, will feature many notables from the industry including Franz von Holzhausen of Tesla, Lawrence Burns, co-author of Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century and Bryan Thompson of V-Vehicle. If you’d like to learn a bit more about the future of automobiles and you’re in the New York area on the evening of May 27th, then this event should be on the top of your to-do list. Follow the link below to learn more.