FEB 19

Yesterday morning, San Francisco's mayor Gavin Newsom unveiled three electric vehicle charging stations in front of City Hall. Ahead of the city's planned network of charging stations through Better Place, these stations will be used to charge the city's municipal fleet of electric vehicles, as well as those owned by car-sharing services City CarShare and Zipcar.

The stations were provided as a two-year public demonstration by Coulomb Technologies, one of the start-ups racing to secure city contracts for electric vehicle charging networks. The company's Smartlet Charging Stations are so-called because they use communication network technology to communicate directly with the grid in order to prevent overload. The stations are activated by the use of their ChargePoint Smart Cards, which work like a membership card. Drivers can choose to pay per session or to pay for a set amount of charging sessions per month.

Coulumb Technologies plans to install 40 of their Smartlet stations along California highways by the end of the quarter. In addition to San Francisco, the company already has demonstration stations in San Jose.

via Gas 2.0

Comments (4)

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Electric vehicle/Solar advocate
written by Lawrence Rhodes EV/PV advocate, February 21, 2009

I'm interested in how these stations supply electricity to the electric vehicles. Do they support the Lepton scooter? The Vectrix motorcycle? Home conversions? Neighborhood Electric Vehicles. Plugin Hybrids? All these can use a simple wall plug that is in every home in the country. I suspect these stations have a plug that is completly different. There is already a system of electric distribution in this country. I would hope these stations would use it. The simple 125v wall plug as well as standard 250v service. KISS. Lawrence Rhodes.......

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Yay for San Francisco!
written by lalala, February 21, 2009

I've always wanted to visit this city. Wish something like this were going on where I live.

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Plugs on the Coulomb stations
written by Jenn, February 23, 2009

Lawrence, these plugs are the std. 120V household plugs, so you can plug in all your cool vehicles there!

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written by jrminvestor, July 06, 2010

Better Place is the battery swap strategy and Coulumb has stations and Solar Panel based parking structures and partners ( ie/ Envision Solar EVSI.BB). Any benefits to the Solar over the swap. The swap is more battery based then solar in the long run or is the charging 100% solar based?

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