Probably following Ford’s 5,000 home charging stations giveaway, Coulomb Technologies plans to install 4,600 electric vehicle charging stations, with a third of them installed only in the company’s homeland: California. They already have 700 charging stations around the U.S., charging 130 electric car owners.
Public and private charging stations will be set up in L.A., Sacramento, San Jose, San Francisco Bay Area, Austin, Detroit, New York, Orlando, Redmond and Washington, D.C. The installation begins in the coming weeks, and the charging points will be suited for EVs like the Chevrolet Volt, Ford Transit Connect, Ford Focus and the Smart Fortwo.
1,000 of the stations will be powered by December, and the rest will follow by September 2011.
This “giveaway” is part of a bigger project, worth $37 million, called ChargePoint America. It is funded in part by a $15-million stimulus grant by the DOE through the Transportation Electrification Initiative.
The installation of these charging points is essential in order to give the consumers the trust they need to have in EVs, since their biggest fear is that they won’t have enough places to juice up their cars, like they have gas stations for their petrol-powered vehicles. It is also essential that this number of charging stations to be supplemented in the following years.
