Public-private partnerships key to building regional EV infrastructure

Conceptual drawing of solar-powered EV-charging station. (Johnston Marklee/ECOtality)

One of the most prominent hurdles facing the large-scale proliferation of electric cars in the United States is establishing the necessary charging infrastructure. Metropolitan areas in five states have been selected to participate in a three-year study to test electric car-charging corridors

Thanks to a $100 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to embark on the project, the EV Project will be the first combination vehicle/charge-network roll-out in North America. Headed up by eTec, a subsidiary of ECOtality, (OTCBB:ETLY), the forty-partner EV Project will deliver 4,700 electric cars and 11,210 charging systems to support those cars in eleven cities across five states: Arizona, California, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.

The EV Project will join other infrastructure developers already working on building out other EV-hubs, including a Bay Area EV-charging network that will include publicly-available Coulomb Technologies Chargepoint stations in San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco.

In Washington state, roughly one thousand Nissan LEAFs—Nissan's forthcoming all-electric vehicle due in 2010—will be deployed to cities around central Puget Sound.

The regional case for electric cars in the Pacific Northwest is strong as the cheap, abundant and clean hydroelectric resource makes the area a prime candidate for transitioning to an electric transportation base.

As the batteries used in EVs become more advanced and their ranges extend, project developers in Washington hope to develop an electric corridor along I-5 between Eugene and Seattle, with an eventual extension to Vancouver, B.C.

The charging stations, the bulk of which will be in homes, will also in high population-density and high-traffic commercial areas.

Map of five-state EV Project rollout.

The idea central to the EV project is to make the rechargers for electric vehicles readily available at places such as coffee shops, post offices, grocery stores and where people work. A regular charge could take four to eight hours, while a rapid charge could take 10 to 15 minutes.

A charge could cost 50 cents to $1.50 at home, but a rapid charge would be more expensive. It is also ikely that charging could be used to incentivize consumer patronage with companies providing free car-charging at store locations to attract shoppers and help ease the 'range anxiety' held by electric car owners.

Follow Tim Hurst on twitter