The potential electric car future will get a reboot in December, when a thousand new cars are scheduled to arrive in the region, supported by the beginnings of a new recharging infrastructure.
Cars powered entirely by electricity have been discussed and even produced since the 1970s as a way to eliminate reliance on foreign oil and reduce air pollution. But after decades of false starts, electric cars hit the market last March with the Tesla Roadster, and they’ll arrive in force when the Leaf rolls into town in December.
Combined with a $100 million government grant to build recharging infrastructure, the electric vehicle may be arriving as a serious player in the car market.
“I think we have a better chance this time around, because all of the manufacturers are on board,” said Joseph Gottlieb, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of San Diego.
Already, the electric car industry has fixed some of the problems from the mid-1990s, the last time electric cars seemed poised to catch on. Gottlieb said manufacturers have put a lot of publicity muscle behind the cars, showing them off instead of hiding them.
Joel Pointon, electric transportation manager for San Diego Gas & Electric Co., said this time around the industry has agreed on key standards.
“We’ve been working on the things that had to precede this for the past few years,” he said. “Like getting the standards for the connectors: All the vehicles in the United States will use the same type of connectors.”
And the quality of the cars has changed substantially.
Tesla Motors Inc. began producing the all-electric Roadster in March. The car has always been sold as a high-performance sports car with rapid acceleration, a sleek shape, two seats, a range of 244 miles, and a $129,000 price tag for 2010.
Rob Wilder of Encinitas, environmental entrepreneur and car lover, bought one of the first Roadsters last spring, when it went for $92,000, a price even he still finds mildly astonishing. But he seems to think it was worth it.
“You hear about these people with the ‘EV (electric vehicle) grin’?” Wilder said. “I have to say, it’s true. I love this car.”
But even Wilder is looking forward to the Leaf, which promises to be more of a family car. Nissan has been close-mouthed about the details, but the four-seat hatchback is expected to cost around $25,000. Its 100-mile range can’t compare with the Roadster, but researchers say it should be enough for most people to get to work and back, or to do their daily errands.
December will also see the rollout of the Volt from Chevrolet, but the Volt is a plug-in hybrid with a gas motor to recharge the battery. Carlsbad-based electric carmaker Aptera has no scheduled release date. All of these cars, and the Leaf, have waiting lists that can be found on their company Web sites.
The Leafs and Teslas will be joined by a skeletal infrastructure created by SDG&E, which has partnered with Ecotality, an Arizona company. Ecotality led a grant application that won $100 million to install charging stations in five parts of the country, including San Diego County.
Locally, 1,000 chargers will be distributed free to residential users who apply through their Web site, www.theevproject.com. While the Leaf and Roadster both can charge from a standard electric outlet, it can take 14 hours or more, Pointon said. The chargers that Ecotality will be distributing can charge a Leaf in six hours.
An additional 1,400 chargers will be given to commercial customers. Pointon said he expects some of these customers to be transportation companies looking to power a fleet of cars, but others may be retail stores trying to attract electric car owners.
There will also be 60 fast chargers distributed around the region, each of which can recharge a Leaf in 24 minutes. Ecotality and SDG&E are working with local government officials, and they’re taking suggestions from the public on where to locate the fast chargers, but the intent is to put them at major transit corridors that would extend the range of the cars.
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Source: nctiomes.com
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