The City Hall hosts about three of these new stations

Feb 19, 2009 20:01 GMT  ·  By
The San Francisco City Hall now houses three electric recharging stations, operated by Smartlet
   The San Francisco City Hall now houses three electric recharging stations, operated by Smartlet

San Francisco is now the proud owner of three electrical vehicle recharging stations, strategically placed in front of the City Hall, for optimum access from all areas. This effort is just a small part of a larger initiative underway in the state of California, where mayors form several large cities plan to turn the entire region into the leader of the EV market in the United States. These new stations, which have only been inaugurated yesterday, are to remain open for two years, and are operated by manufacturer Coulomb Technologies' Smartlet.

“Electric vehicles are the future of transportation and the Bay Area is the testing ground for the technology. We began using plug-in hybrids in the city’s fleet last year. Now, for the first time the public can plug-in to the next generation of cars through car sharing organizations and take them for a drive in San Francisco,” the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newson, says.

“Today’s announcement further demonstrates that the Bay Area is the epicenter of the electric vehicle movement. A smart, networked infrastructure is an essential enabler of this movement and the City of San Francisco is leading by example,” the CEO of Coulomb Technologies, Richard Lowenthal, adds.

The main problem in San Francisco is not the fact that people are reluctant to buy electric or hybrid vehicles, but that there currently lacks the necessary infrastructure to allow for such a development. The mayor admits that only 16 percent of the cars in the city have parking spots. Under these circumstances, promoting the aggressive expansion of eco-friendly vehicles may seem a bit pointless, seeing how they are nowhere to be housed.

Nevertheless, Mayor Newsom, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed have pledged to turn their respective areas into leading examples of future technologies, by adopting a plan to build several recharging stations on their territories, as well as to facilitate such operations as battery swaps. This means that people will not have to wait for 2 or 3 hours before the batteries of their cars are recharged, but will be able to simply swap for one already in stock and leave their own for re-charging and then for someone else's use.

According to officials, this is the fairest system, and subscribers to it could pay a minimum fee to companies, which will thus be able to offset the costs implied by operating a recharge station. The three mayors have decided to make the area competitive and affordable, as far as EV go, by no later than 2012, which is a fairly ambitious program, seeing how the current economic crisis looms over the region. The initiative is, nevertheless, worthy of praise.