Hybrid electric cars sit on display in front of San Francisco's city hall on November 20. San Francisco Bay Area cities promised to build the electric car capital of the United States, announcing a plan to work with start-up Better Place to put battery-powered autos on the road in 2012. (Kimberly White / Reuters)
Bay Area seeks to become electric-car capital
By Eoin O'Carroll | 11.24.08
The mayors of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose announced an ambitious public-private partnership last week to develop a $1 billion network of charging outlets for electric cars.
The money will be raised by Better Place, a Silicon Valley startup that develops infrastructure to support electric vehicles. The company plans to install about 250,000 charging ports and up to 200 battery-exchange stations in the Bay Area by 2012. The mayors say that they predict that this network will make the area a top-priority market for electric-vehicle manufacturers.
“Our aim is to make the Bay Area – and eventually California – the electric vehicle capital of the US,” said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in a press release.
The plan was praised by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who touted its environmental and economic potential.
“This type of public-private partnership is exactly what I envisioned when we created the first ever low-carbon fuel standard and when the state enacted the zero-emissions vehicle program.” said Governor Schwarzenegger in the press release. “This partnership is proof that by working together, we can achieve our goals of creating a healthier planet while boosting our economy at the same time.”
Better Place, based in Palo Alto, Calif., has already begun developing electric-vehicle grids in Israel, Denmark, and Australia. The company, which is headed by software whiz and former SAP executive Shai Agassi, operates under a novel business model, distributing electric cars the way telecoms distribute cellphones.
Instead of purchasing a car outright, customers subscribe to a certain number of miles per month and get the electric car at a discounted rate, or even for free. Better Place operates the recharge grid and owns the batteries.
Most current electric-car batteries can go only about 40 miles before needing to be recharged. (That’s more than the average round-trip daily commute.) For trips longer than that, Better Place is planning to build 100 to 200 completely automated battery-swapping centers in the Bay Area, where drivers can pull in and have their depleted batteries exchanged for fresh ones, all without ever leaving their cars.
In previous deals, Better Place has partnered with Renault-Nissan, which provides the electric cars. The automaker was absent at last Thursday’s announcement, but an electric Nissan Rouge SUV was among the electric cars on display outside San Francisco’s city hall.
The San Jose Mercury News reports that, since its founding in 2007, Better Place has raised $200 million in venture capital. Mr. Agassi says he has backing from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and the Macquarie Capital Alliance Group. He does not plan on asking the cities for money.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Agassi said that the $1 billion would be raised over three years or so, with about $200 million needed initially.
For their part, San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose will expedite permits for building charging stations in homes, businesses, and public parking spaces. The cities will also offer incentives for businesses that install charging stations, as well as programs for bulk purchases of electric vehicles for state- and municipal-government fleets.
The plan would also encourage drivers to take advantage of a federal incentive, which offers tax credits of up to $7,500.
On the same day that the plan was announced, the Global Venture Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, released a report that found that, in two decades, adoption of electric cars by 39 percent of American drivers would lead to an annual $175 billion in gasoline savings for US consumers, while the battery industry would experience a $120 billion gain, all with only a “moderate” burden on the power system. Such widespread adoption of electric vehicles would significantly decrease the US trade deficit, the report found.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board welcomed the announcement, saying that the Bay Area is well suited to electric vehicles. But it expressed reservations about the potential monopoly power of Better Place and about the hurdles presented by the current financial crisis:
With one firm controlling the charging stations, there needs to [be a] fair way to determine how much drivers will pay for the service. While the electric option may make sense long term, there are short-term concerns such as dropping gas prices and credit woes that could undercut investment.
Prominent green futurist Alex Steffen was also optimistic about the plan. Writing in his online ecomagazine, Worldchanging, Mr. Steffen called it “precisely this kind of an investment in the infrastructure that’s needed to really get innovation and uptake rolling.” He also tries to put the program’s billion-dollar price tag in perspective:
<< Report: Climate protests rising | Main[W]hen I read one billion for this project, I thought about the roughly one trillion or so we’re expected to dump into economic stabilization and recovery programs, all told, and wondered if even half of that went into new bright green infrastructure, what we might accomplish.
Comments
2. Walid Saad | 11.24.08
Why doesn’t anyone think of just wiring the roads for electric supply and having fully electric cars that suck the energy from the road. Obviously, this would start with hybrid (rechargeable/fully electric) phasing into fully electric with time as more roads are wired. Wouldn’t that be a good place for public money and investment for the future. Produce clean, relatively cheap nuclear power and put it to good use! How hard can that be? If we bail out the Big 3, they should be forced to produce electric cars with full power!
3. Man Overboard | 11.25.08
While I agree 100% it is time for electric cars (decades overdue), there are several gapping holes in this plan.
Where is the electricity going to come from? Is California going to build new power plants to cover those thirsty car batteries?
Who wants to buy a car that you can’t leave the city in? Even if these cars get a range of 300 miles (they’re not even close by the way), road trips are difficult if you can’t recharge once you leave the city.
With any luck this program will prove me wrong and radiate out from the Bay Area. I sincerely hope it does.
Check out my ideas on the Auto/Energy industry at http://www.babeled.com
Combined with the Bay Area initiative it might just work!
4. Pithy Opiner | 11.25.08
Man Overboard, the electric cars are for those of us who have a short commute to work, less than 40 miles. Do you have any understanding of how many millions of people that would be?? If you are not one of them, then you would stick with your gas powered car. But, those of us who could afford to buy an all electric car would be in 7th heaven for 5 days of the week. On the weekend if we wanted to drive to Jackson to gamble, we would just fire up the Lincoln Towncar and go. No biggie. I wish the article would have expounded on the $7500 tax credit. Wow! You can buy a used good Chevy S10 for 5 grand, the conversion kit is 10 grand and about 10 grand to put it all together at a conversion shop. And, those prices will come down as the popularity of the electric car rises.
5. Pithy Opiner | 11.25.08
How many road trips to you make?? I make a couple of year. Like most people, all I do is go back and forth to work 5 times a week. I work only 10 miles from my house. I would be a perfect candidate for an all-electric car. Drive to work, come home and plug it in til I get in it the following morning. If I want to take a trip to L.A., then I just break out the Towncar and go.
6. William Thacker | 11.25.08
There are electric cars that one can buy today that get as much as 250 miles per charge and one reads about a possible 80% charge in 15 minutes or so - could charging stations not be installed at state rest stops.
Its here; the era of the electric car. Lets get on with it! Tax credits. Incentives to manufactures. Assistance to startups. Prizes to the best electric car design. The Chinese are way ahead on this. Our automobile manufactures (if they are still around) will still be looking at their options when the Norwegian TH!NK, the Mini Minor Electric and many others will be rolling out of show rooms to customers in Oregon and California and elsewhere.
The electric car will provide incentives to produce more: wind, solar and other forms of clean energy.
7. Tom in San Jose | 11.25.08
No solution is perfect. Time will tell which approach will work, but we have to start somewhere. I recently was at an electric car dealership. The cars also had a range of 40 miles, which is fine for work commutes, but the maximum speed was only about 36mph, which is not good. As others mentioned, there is also an issue about where all the electricity will come from. Nuclear power plants are inherently expensive, because there must be zero tolerance for nuclear accidents. Solar farms in the Southwest with compressed air for storage is the best bet (see the Scientific American issue for Jan. 2008). The money spent on bailing out the gamblers on Wall Street and paying for an unnecessary war could have taken us a long way to built a solar infrastructure. Why do we even need cars in cities ? Why not invest in public transportation. I lived in European cities, and never ever used a car. The average waiting time for subways, trams, fast trains and buses was five minutes. For example, I could cross Vienna in less than an hour. If I wanted to get out of town, I just took the train or could have rented a Smart Car for a few dollars.
8. Mike | 11.26.08
I already drive an all electric car around my ranch daily and it does the work of a small pickup. It’s quiet, non-polluting, always starts, and requires the very minimum of maintenance. At the end of each day I drive into the garage and plug it in and it’s ready to go in the morning. It’s a golf cart. I can’t wait to own another electric vehicle that will go a little faster and a little further for the trip to town. Electric is fantastic!
9. SensibleSally | 11.26.08
This is such a great step forward! It’s about time. We’re lucky to have an intelligent and green mayor. Believe me, other cities are not so lucky. San Franciscans are going to look back on this period fondly as the start of the green boom. A good kind of boom to have.
Electric cars, recharged with solar power, is a brilliant solution for the problem in front of us. Let’s get on with it!
10. John McGinley | 11.28.08
RECHARGING ELECTRIC CARS – IS IT REALLY THAT DIFFICULT?
Am I missing something? Is it so simple that no one has thought of it? Of all the articles or stories I’ve read about how hard it’s going to be to build the infrastructure to supply power to charge the electric cars of tomorrow none that I’ve read has disclosed my idea. Let me know if you’ve seen this concept mentioned before, and if not, I would like to hear your comments.
Here it is.
Every car manufacturer is limited to making their batteries, the entire pack as well as how it’s mounted in the car to one, two or at most, three configurations. The pack must be easily removable and replaceable in minutes. You convert all the current gas stations and modify them with solar panels so they can generate the power needed to recharge the dead batteries. Anybody with an electric car drives until they need a freshly charged battery. They pull into one of these “charging” stations, the attendant disengages and slides the dead battery out, slides a new one in, you pay a nominal fee like, say, $10.00 and you’re on your way. The price for this service is the same anywhere in the US, or world, and never goes up. All the current station owners get to keep their businesses because the government would give them tax incentives to convert to solar charging stations and instantly you have recharging stations already built and on the roadways where they need to be. By using these solar panels on the roofs of the charging stations as the power source, there wouldn’t be an over burden on the current power grid. Also, there wouldn’t be the need to build new charging outlets in hard to reach places, like the streets of major cities and parking garages in office buildings. Setting out on a trip longer than one charge would no longer be a fear knowing you will be able to get a new battery anywhere on the road.
Now, to make it all work, there has to be a way for the manufacturers to continue to make money off the deal. Here’s how that works. The station owner has to purchase the batteries from the manufacturer, just as he would have to purchase the fuel. They have a life cycle so that the manufacturer will continue to have to make and sell them. Also, if the consumer has to give up one thing, it should be that the batteries can only be charged through these charging stations. No charging your car at home or work. As much as I hate saying that, doing so would keep the recharging off the current electric grid insuring we don’t put undo stress on that system and it would keep those charging businesses in business which is the most important part of this concept.
It’s that simple! Please, tell me. What I am I missing here. It just seems too elementary to not at least consider it. I would love to hear your comments, and if someone out there is in the automobile industry, tell us why it couldn’t happen.
Thanks.
11. Mike McFadden | 12.02.08
The time of electric cars is NOT upon us. There are several reasons why:
(1) Car manufacturers are too entrenched in ancient technology and walk hand in hand with oil companies to change in a meaningful way.
(2) Infrastructure is too expensive to actualize for a rehauling of the automobile. People all ready complain about taxes imagine having to foot the bill to accomodate a questionable method of alternate fuel source.
(3) Finally, battery technology has reached a plateau of sorts. While scientists are trying (and succeeding to a point) to construct better batteries they remain large, bulky, and inefficient. This is the real problem concerning the electric car. Cars, especially electric ones, rely on the basic principle of power-to-weight ratio. The heavier the car the less efficient the fuel will be to propel said vehicle. An electric car needs to be extremely light in order to make the large battery with its small amount of stored potential energy work for distances longer than a few miles. This brings up safety issues using lightweight materials and unproven battery technology that may not withstand accidents or even the day-to-day use to which we are accustomed.
I am all for the transition from a dilapidated and harmful technology (combustion engine) to a more enviromentally sound option. The problem is the engineering of such a vehicle and we are not as close to a practical solution as we would like to think.
12. Robby | 12.04.08
The title is somewhat wishful thinking since places like New York have many electrics. A good site covering electric cars is the Electric Car Society’s site at electriccarsociety.com. The tell the pro and con’s of electrics.
13. DIY Electric Car Guy | 12.09.08
I wander if the charging station are available for DIY electric car users. Some people would prefer to convert their existing gasoline driven car to electric. The charging station will be very useful to charge the batteries hence increasing the driving range.
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1. sherry | 11.24.08
We seriously need to get on with the business of becoming energy independent. While we are doing the happy dance around the pumps with the lower prices OPEC is planning yet more production cuts and will not quit until they achieve their desired price per barrel. The record high prices this past year have done serious damage to our economy and society. WE must move forward with energy independence. We have the knowledge, we have the technology, what America lacks is a plan. Jeff Wilson has a new book out that is beyond awesome. The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence NOW. He walks you through every aspect of oil, what it is used for besides gas, our depletion of it. The worlds increased need ie 3rd world countries becoming more modernized and consuming more. He explains EVERY alternative energy source and what role they can play to replace oil. His research is backed up with hard data and even includes a time frame and proposed legislative agendas to wean America off oil. http://www.themanhattanprojectof2009.com