Green Space

New charging stations, EV exhibits ... Philly gets juiced.

They were dancing the electric slide yesterday at Temple University. That was to celebrate the unveiling of two new PhillyCarShare electric car charging stations at the corner of North Broad and Diamond streets. And two new Chevy Volts to plug into them.

4 comments

New charging stations, EV exhibits ... Philly gets juiced.

POSTED: Thursday, August 9, 2012, 11:31 AM

Sandy Bauers, Inquirer GreenSpace Columnist

They were dancing the electric slide yesterday at Temple University.

That was to celebrate the unveiling of two new PhillyCarShare electric car charging stations at the corner of North Broad and Diamond streets. And two new Chevy Volts to plug into them.

This brings the number of PhillyCarShare charging stations to nine.

Temple is encouraging the university community to seek greener forms of transportation--including ride-sharing, public mass transit and biking -- Temple is attempting to reduce energy consumption by 25 percent in two years.

Meanwhile, other electrifying events are occurring as well.

ECOtality, Inc., a San Francisco-based electric transportation and energy storage company, is going to begin offering free charging stations in the greater Philadelphia area as part of its expansion of The EV Project, a data-gathering partnership with the Department of Energy.

Qualified residents in the Philadelphia region who have taken ownership of either the Nissan LEAF or Chevy Volt, will receive a free residential Blink wall mount charger as well as an installation credit of up to $400, subject to certain conditions. Residents and commercial hosts interested in participating can sign up at http://www.theevproject.com/sign-up.php or by emailing philadelphia@ecotality.com.

The project, funded with about $230 million in public and private funds, is designed to collect and analyze data about vehicle use in various geographies and climates, to analyze how well the charge infrastructure works and to conduct trials of various ways of charging for the service -- all to lead to a better system for the next generation of electric vehicles.

PECO is joining the initiative, adding its own incentives for electric vehicles, and PSE&G will join the program for its customers in Camden, Burlington, Gloucester and Mercer counties.

So far, The EV Project has logged more than 32 million miles and installed 7,000 charging stations in 18 markets nationwide. Click here to find out what the program has learned so far about Los Angeles electric vehicle drivers.

ECOtality is presenting a forum about the program Aug. 16 at the National Constitution Center. For details, check the Blink charger's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/blinknetwork.

And one more thing: Throughout the rest of August, the Philadelphia law firm Zarwin, Baum, DeVito, Kaplan, Schaer & Toddy, P.C. plus U-GO Stations, Inc., a Pennsylvania company working with businesses and public municipalities to develop of an electric vehicle charging station infrastructure, are bringing to electric cars to the 1818 Market Street patio in Center City.

Norman Zarwin is a co-founding partner of the law firm and chairman of U-GO Stations.

For now, they're showing the the Nissan Leaf, a five-door hatchback electric car, and the Fisker Karma, a plug-in hybrid luxury sports sedan.

Look for more electric vehicles at the patio later this year.

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Comments (4)

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 12:35 PM, 08/09/2012

Remove the artifical government cash and this entire segmant crashes like a big house of cards because there is ZERO natural demand for these products at the price which would be dictated by the free market. Hybrids & electric cars still account for less than 1% of all vehicles sold and that is with all of these insane government fluff programs ($$$$). Get the government out of artifically manipulating the free market and let the invisible hand of supply & demand dictate which vehicles consumers want and which vehicles manufacturers will make. This is a MASSIVE waste of taxpayer cash...

— kelprod2

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 5:07 PM, 08/10/2012

kelpod2 - where did you study economics? you don't think fossil fuels have costs associated with them that we all pay for? have you not read the papers lately (worst drought in midwest in years - food prices rising)? exxon has made more money than any other company in the history of money because they don't pay for their externalities. they get to dump CO2 into the atmosphere free of charge and don't have to pay for the damage. we let the greedy corporations jeopardize our planet and pervert our democracy. the costs of continuing to do nothing about global warming are astronomical - more extreme weather and failing crops and floods - and exxon is NOT going to pay - we ALL will. If you make fossil fuels pay for all the damage they do - pollution that causes illness, asthma, polluted rivers and air, CO2 emissions, mountain top removal - then they would all be out of business. instead we have the "tragedy of the commons" on a global scale - unsustainable growth that will lead to collapse.

— brianpdx

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 4:41 AM, 02/21/2013

That's great. I also heard that New York City's Mayor Bloomberg has called for incorporating 10,000 new EV charging stations in the area before 2020. The effort was only one of the clean technology measures suggested in the mayor's 12th and final State of the area address. Go further: New EV Charging Stations by 2020.
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— MonicaH

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 4:41 AM, 02/21/2013

— MonicaH

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About this blog

Sandy Bauers is the environment reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where she has worked for more than 20 years as a reporter and editor. She lives in northern Chester County with her husband, two cats, a large vegetable garden and a flock of pet chickens.

GreenSpace - her column about how to reduce your carbon footprint in everyday life - appears every other Monday in Health & Science. Reach Sandy at sbauers@phillynews.com.