ELVIIS – the Electric Vehicle Intelligent Infra Structure – is designed to allow drivers to charge the battery pack of the vehicle using any ordinary power outlet. When connected, the ELVIIS system identifies the outlet via GPS, and allows the driver to set timing and charging amount on a touch-screen controller or smartphone device.

When set, the ELVIIS system uses the mobile network to communicate with the central grid in order to configure the charging scheme such that the energy grid is used in the most efficient way possible and that the driver gets the best price for the energy he or she is using.

The system monitors the charging process, alerting the driver if there is any interruption, while the cost of each charge is automatically directed to the driver’s personal utility bill regardless of where the car is charged.

Initial tests have used a Volvo C30 Electric vehicle with an added 7in colour touch-screen controller for accessing the ELVIIS system. Now further tests will take place using an additional four C30 Electric cars to further prove the concept.

“Our basic view is that the owner of an electric vehicle shouldn’t have to sacrifice any of the properties he or she expects from a luxury car,” explained Lennart Stegland, Volvo’s vice president in charge of electric propulsion systems, at the announcement. “This smart technology for charging in any outlet, and paying automatically via your own electricity bill, is an excellent example of how we do everything to make the daily use easier for the customer.”

Read More / Source : Expert Reviews

United Nissan of Las Vegas also has conducted business over the years with the same attitude. They always put their customers first.

The delivery of United Nissan’s first Nissan Leaf to Michael and Elizabeth Kirschenbaum marked another milestone for Nevada’s No. 1 Nissan dealer . While the Leaf may never reach the popularity and number of sales at the dealership as the Altima or Versa, management realizes the Leaf is just the first of long line of alternative vehicles to come and, with them, plenty of future energy-conscious customers.

The Kirschenbaums represent a growing population that is determined to do its part in helping reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil. They said they traveled a long road before deciding on the Leaf.

“After researching for several years and being disappointed with the hybrid car class (Elizabeth Kirschenbaum owned a 2003 Civic Hybrid) we said enough with this madness. Test drove a Volt, eek. Had reserved a Tesla S and still wondered where are the cars? Finally (we found) a car company that had it right. Nissan,” she said.

The process of ordering and purchasing their new Leaf also played a big role in their decision.

“Nissan has a very easy online reservation for the preorder of a Leaf. Upon completing some basic info we were then put in touch with Bill Ross at United Nissan. Our journey continued to be an easy, stress-free buying experience due to being in the care of Bill. I cannot stress enough that as two highly seasoned new-car owners that Feb. 8 was the easiest delivery of a new car either one of us has experienced,” she said.

Read More / Source : Las Vegas Review

Californians who drive electric-powered cars are getting a free ride when it comes to gas taxes that pay for much of road maintenance costs, but that could end if a national movement to charge owners a fee spreads here.

“Its not here yet, but we anticipate it’s not far away,” said Jay Friedland, legislative director for Plug in America, a California-based nonprofit that advocates for electric vehicles.

Legislative efforts to levy a fee on electric vehicles are gaining attention in Washington state, Oregon, Virginia and Arizona, he said.

In Washington, for example, the state Senate  this month approved 31-16  a bill that would require owners of electric vehicles to pay an annual $100 fee.

“We think the purchase of electric vehicles is great for the environment but we also need to maintain our roads, which is why we have the gas tax,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, said in a statement. “Electric vehicles put just as much wear and tear on our roads as gas vehicles. This simply ensures that they contribute their fair share to the upkeep of our roads.”

The fee would apply to vehicles powered solely by electricity and capable of going more than 35 mph. The $100 fee would be dropped if Washington replaced its gas tax with a tax based instead on distance traveled.

Such a road-usage tax has been considered by the Legislature in neighboring Oregon, under which owners of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles would be charged 1.43 cents a mile, the Oregonian newspaper in Portland has reported.

While no legislation on the issue has been introduced yet in California, Friedland said there’s been some talk of imposing a fee on electric vehicles.

With electric car owners paying no gas taxes and hybrid owners paying not much, he said “it makes sense that electric and hybrids pay their fair share” for road maintenance.

He said Plug in America believes a fee based on the wear and tear put on roads, determined by a vehicle’s weight and miles traveled, would be best but only after a substantial number of electric cars, such as 50,000 to 100,000, are on California roads.

Friedland said it’s kind of contradictory for states to consider electric-vehicle fees at the same time that they’re providing tax incentives for people to buy the vehicles.

Sonoma County is joining the push for electric vehicles with a plan to install charging stations in every city in the county that would be available for public use for a fee.

Dave Head, the county government’s fleet manager, said a group of officials is trying to figure out how much to charge because under the law the county can’t make a profit — it can only cover its costs of providing the service.

Read More / Source : Press Democrat

The new architecture allows drivers to control charging of cars while they are plugged into any ordinary power outlet. Additionally, the system directs energy costs to the car owners’ bill.  The driver sets the time and amount to charge on a console in the car or remotely via a smartphone or tablet.

Using the mobile network, the car then communicates with the grid so that charging is scheduled based on energy prices on the grid, reducing user costs. For the energy utilities, coordinating the charging of cars across the grid is more efficient and sustainable.

To provide a range of perspectives the concept was developed in a consortium involving Volvo Car Corporation, Göteborg Energi, the leading utility in western Sweden, Ericsson and Viktoria Institute, a non-profit IT research institute.

Per-Åke Olsson, CEO at Viktoria Institute, said: “Our mission is to take knowledge to market as innovations. This is a successful example of cross-industry collaboration with great business potential. We believe that this project will support global market penetration of electric vehicles, thus helping society towards sustainable mobility.”

Göteborg Energi is taking an interest in the digitalization of the charging infrastructure, and the strategies and possibilities it creates. “Electric vehicles will be a key component both for a sustainable society and for a smart grid. We are committed to making the charging of the vehicles easy, as well as optimizing the use of the power grid at the same time,” says Lotta Brändström, CEO Göteborg Energi.

The Volvo Electric C30, now in low-scale production for leasing customers in Europe, has been used during the project and equipped with the in-vehicle meter and software. Lennart Stegland, Vice President Electric Propulsion Systems, Volvo Car Corporation, said: “Our basic view is that the owner of an electric vehicle shouldn’t have to sacrifice any of the properties he or she expects from a luxury car. This smart technology for charging in any outlet, and paying automatically via your own electricity bill, is an excellent example of how we do everything to make the daily use easier for the customer.”

Ericsson’s contribution to the project is to understand and influence how existing and future mobile networks, services and terminals can support new business concepts as well as services that benefit society. Ericsson is providing IT and communications expertise.

Paolo Colella, Head of Consulting and Systems Integration at Ericsson, says: “New solutions like these need to seamlessly and reliably coordinate multi-party machine-to-machine and human-to-machine interactions, where both people and machines are mobile, while allowing secure financial transactions. Our job is to make that simple.”

Read More / Source : Rueters

Rays of the winter sun bounce off gleaming mirrors on the tiny lake of Colignola in Italy, where engineers have built a cost-effective prototype for floating, rotating solar panels.

“You are standing on a photovoltaic floating plant which tracks the sun, it’s the first platform of its kind in the world!” said Marco Rosa-Clot, a professor at Florence University, proudly showing off his new project.

Rosa-Clot and his team say they are revolutionizing solar power and that their floating flower-petal-like panels soaking up the Tuscan sun have already attracted a lot of interest from international buyers.

Standard solar panels on buildings or in fields have been criticized for taking up valuable agricultural land, being unsightly and losing energy through overheating — issues the floating plants would resolve.

The Floating Tracking Cooling Concentrator (FTCC) system is designed to exploit unused areas of artificial reservoirs or disused quarries.

While the water keeps the panels at low temperatures, reflectors are positioned to maximize solar capture at different times of day, making it more efficient than a traditional installation, Rosa-Clot said.

The head of Scintec, a small family business which produces a variety of renewable energy and industrial devices, Rosa-Clot said the pilot plant set up on the lake near Pisa, Tuscany, was a model of efficiency.

“It’s a small-scale design, 30 kilowatts, which would suffice for a dozen or so families. The standard is set at 3kW per apartment,” he said.

At an estimated price of around 1,600 euros per kW including installation, a plant the size of Colignola could cost some 48,000 euros ($63,000).

Scintec says its system costs 20 percent less than ground-based structures.

The flat panels are winged by reflectors and sit on raft-like structures which are anchored to the lake bed with a pylon.

Decked out in jeans and jacket, the engineer explained the benefit that a place like sun-kissed Sicily with its 75 square kilometers (29 square miles) of artificial reservoirs and lakes could draw from the system.

“If we covered just 10 percent of that area with floating photovoltaic panels, we would have one gigawatt of power installed,” he said — enough to power 10 million 100-watt light bulbs.

Engineer Raniero Cazzaniga, who works on the project, said that some people think classic solar installations are spoiling the landscape.

“Our system is designed for low-lying quarries. The installation is only about a meter (three feet) high and usually you can’t see it until you get to the water’s edge. It is not at all intrusive,” he said.

Their cost-efficient project has sparked international interest.

Read More / Source :  Discovery News

As if there weren’t already enough reasons to want to work at Google, the company has added one more – a new 2013 Honda Fit EV. Honda’s newest all-electric vehicle isn’t yet available to the general public butGoogle employees have a chance to get behind the wheel of the new EV as part of the company’s G-Fleet program. The G-Fleet program is Google’s in-house car-sharing service.

Google is testing the vehicle as a participant in the Honda Electric Vehicle Demonstration Program. Google employees will share their feedback about the vehicle with Honda so the company can fine-tune the EV for its market debut later this year.

“The goal of the Honda Electric Vehicle Demonstration Program is to better understand the challenges and opportunities associated with the advancement in battery-electric technology,” said Steve Center, vice president of the Environmental Business Development Office at American Honda. “Honda has a long history with electric vehicles beginning with the introduction of our first battery-electric car, the EV Plus, nearly 15 years ago. Honda’s experience and the unique feedback that Google, Stanford Universityand the city of Torrance will provide will be valuable to the future introduction of battery-electric technology.”

As Center mentioned, both Stanford University and the city of Torrance, California are joining Google in the Honda Fit EV testing project. Stanford University’s plans for the vehicle are quite a bit different than Google’s, though. Faculty and students at the college will “study the psychological and physical reactions of using battery-electric vehicles and how these reactions differ when driving a traditional gasoline-powered vehicle.”

Read More / Source : Forbes

The internal combustion engine, driven by improvements in fuel efficiency and performance, will continue to dominate vehicle sales while the electric car sales will sputter for more than a decade, according to a new survey by KPMG.

However, automakers are expected to continue to invest in electric technology, the Global Automotive Executive Survey report said.

“The need for new electric propulsion technology is still top of mind for auto executives around the world, given the demand that will be felt in the emerging markets,” said KPMG’s Peter Hatges.

“Automotive companies will continue to invest heavily in electric propulsion and will play a leadership role in the development of these emerging technologies going forward. “

The survey found that electric vehicle cars are not expected to exceed 15 per cent of new car registrations globally by 2025; that auto executives in North America and Western Europe expect even less, projecting that electric vehicles will only account for six to 10 per cent of global annual sales; and nearly two-thirds say that optimizing the internal combustion engine offers greater efficiency and the most potential for carbon emission reduction.

Read More / Source : Ottawa Citizen

Electric Vehicle Charger Manufacturers

@coulombevi
The official Twitter page of Coulomb Technologies and ChargePoint Network, the largest network of public charging stations and EV drivers in the world.
http://www.coulombtech.com

@ge_wattstation
I’m Brittany Williams, part of the EVSE Product Marketing team at GE Energy- Industrial Solutions. Excited to tweet with you about GE WattStation & EVs!
http://www.geindustrial.com/ev

@ClipperCreek
ClipperCreek is a leading manufacture of EVSE charging stations. To date we have produced over 12,000 units for customers.
http://www.clippercreek.com/

@aerovironment
Official AeroVironment (AV) Twitter page. AV is a leader in the design, development & production of Unmanned Aircraft Systems & Electric Vehicle Charging.
http://www.avinc.com

@ECOtality
ECOtality, Inc. (NASDAQ: ECTY), headquartered in San Francisco, CA, is a leader in clean electric transportation and storage technologies.
http://www.ecotality.com/

@PEPStations
LEADING THE CHARGE
http://www.pepstations.com

@levitonmfg
Leviton is North America’s leading manufacturer of electrical wiring devices, data center connectivity solutions and lighting energy management systems.
http://www.leviton.com

@blinknetwork
Blink is simply smarter than your average car charger.
http://www.blinknetwork.com

@PluglessPower
Plugless Power™ by Evatran is the world’s first hands-free wireless charging system for electric vehicles.
http://www.evatran.com

Did we forget anybody? Is there a manufacturer that you prefer? Let us know in the comments.

A survey commissioned by Chargemaster, a supplier of electric vehicle charging points, has revealed that more than half of new car buyers (58%) would consider choosing an electric car in the next two years.

chargemaster

The survey of 1,032 people across the UK also found that three-quarters of those in the 25-34 age range would consider purchasing an electric vehicle – no surprise there, as younger folk are less resistant to change. And unsurprisingly, a huge 81% of Londoners were positive about the notion of going electric. The city’s massive urban sprawl is arguably one of the most ideal environments for an electric vehicle.

But while the survey’s findings are encouraging, we have also seen recent surveys that indicate that the high cost and limited range of pure-electric vehicles is still a big obstacle when it comes to the take-up of EVs. Having said that, a recent questionnaire by TheChargingPoint.com found our arguably more EV-literate readers were mostly concerned about purchase price, rather than range.

Prices will come down over time as more and more EVs come to market, but that’s not going to happen overnight.

The Chargemaster survey also found that the lack of a national charging infrastructure was a concern for 83% of the survey participants and would negatively affect any decision to go electric. And in London, 91% reckon that a more comprehensive charging network would positively affect their EV buying decision.

This, in spite of the fact that in electric vehicle trials, the vast majority of charging was achieved at home overnight.

Read More / Source : The Charging Point

solar-powered-ev-charging-station

The spotlight, or rather the sunlight, may soon shine on an overlooked piece of infrastructure in the downtown Baldwin Parking Lot.

Tony Eason, owner of Elektron Solar, a Westport business that specializes in solar photovoltaic system installations, wants to build a solar-powered electric vehicle charging station on an electrical shed in the town-owned lot on Elm Street. The facility would use a solar PV array on top of the brick shed to feed electric vehicles during two-hour charging sessions. Construction and maintenance of the 1.84 kilowatt EV charging station would be funded by Elektron Solar and revenue from a private sponsorship.

“It’s ultra-green and totally energy independent,” Eason told the Planning and Zoning Commission during a Feb. 9 meeting. “You’re effectively replacing gasoline with solar-generated electricity. It leverages the private marketplace to invest in public infrastructure without the town giving up ownership.”

The charging station would likely entail the town leasing the electrical shed to Elektron Solar. The building now holds lighting equipment for the lot.

Eason presented his plans to the P&Z during a pre-application hearing, an informal and non-binding review session.

Eason’s proposal reflects the increasing popularity of electric vehicles in Westport. Last July, two solar-powered charging stations installed by Elektron Solar opened at a commercial building at 495 Post Road East, the town’s first EV charging spot. A month later, Connecticut Light & Power opened a public EV charging facility powered solely by the electrical grid in a commuter lot at the Saugatuck Railroad Station.

At least two vehicles could simultaneously power up at the proposed downtown charging station, with Elektron Solar initially providing free service there. In its initial phase, the EV station would not include reserved parking spots.

The Elektron Solar installation in the Baldwin lot would generate annual electricity output worth about $350, Eason estimates. That electricity production would be credited to a town account and fund the use of the EV charging facility. On overcast days, the EV station would draw from the electrical grid; the cost of use on those days would be offset by solar-power credit in the town account.

Read More / Source : Reve.com