By Fairfield Sun on December 21, 2015

A second provider of chargers for electric vehicles (EVs) is coming to Canterbury.

Orion chief executive Rob Jamieson said it would install up to five fast-chargers and more standard chargers around Christchurch and surrounding areas by the end of 2016.

The announcement comes less than two weeks after Charge.net.nz announced it would install an electric car charging station at Z Energy on Moorhouse Ave by the end of February.

The company is installing one new station around New Zealand every two weeks, with 100 already built. Its website maps where these stations are being installed over four years.

Jamieson said Orion’s new charging stations would cost the lines company “several hundred thousand dollars”. Its fast chargers might be installed near cafes, while slower chargers might go into car parks near shopping malls or busy parks.

Electric vehicles were the future and Orion had taken a “build and they will come” approach, Jamieson said. It hoped to do the “seeding” for other investors considering building their own charging stations, he said.

Orion has not yet decided its charging rate. It knew existing electric vehicle drivers could charge their cars more cheaply overnight at home but it wanted people to “have the freedom to go where they want, when they want”.

The source of this article can be found here

This article is written by Stephen Edelstein and can be retrieved at this link

Many automakers are working to add public DC fast-charging stations for their electric cars.

But not all stations can be used by all cars. In fact, there are currently three different fast-charging standards.

There’s the CHAdeMO standard used by the Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, and Kia Soul EV. Then there’s the Combined Charging Standard (CCS) preferred by most U.S. and German manufacturers, and finally Tesla Motors’ own unique Supercharger standard.

Now, two carmakers that use different standards are cooperating on a program of fast-charging expansion in selected areas of the United States.

BMW and Nissan claim to have helped make available new fast-charging stations at 120 locations across 19 states, networked using the Greenlots standard.

These are dual 50-kilowatt stations with a CHAdeMO connector that can accommodate Nissan’s Leaf electric car, and a CCS connector for BMW’s i3.

The stations can recharge most electric cars’ batteries to about 80 percent capacity in 20 to 30 minutes.

States covered by the buildout include California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Drivers can locate stations using their cars’ navigation systems, as well as the BMW i Remote and Nissan EZ-Charge smartphone apps.

All stations are also compatible with the Nissan EZ-Charge card, which grants drivers access to stations across multiple networks without the need for an array of network-specific cards and fobs.

While both CHAdeMO and CCS have their champions, development of infrastructure for each has not proceeded at the same pace.

Nissan has promoted DC fast-charging pretty much since the launch of the Leaf five years ago, and now claims there are around 10,000 CHAdeMO stations available to its drivers worldwide.

But the first CCS station did not open until October 2013, and the first CCS-equipped car–the BMW i3–didn’t start to become widely available until the middle of 2014.

Even though more manufacturers are backing CCS, fewer cars actually use it today, and the buildup of CCS sites in the U.S. lags that of the CHAdeMO network.

More recently, though, BMW has been more aggressive about promoting fast charging.

It previously partnered with Volkswagen to install 100 CCS stations on heavily-traveled East and West Coast corridors.

Dual-standard DC fast-charging stations are now fast becoming the standard for new installations and even retrofits.

Some municipalities include wording in permitting or licensing documents requiring that stations are able to charge using all “published global standards,” meaning CHAdeMO and CCS but not Superchargers (a proprietary protocol limited to Teslas).

Posted Dec. 22, 2015 at 2:01 AM

CANANDAIGUA — Are electric vehicles in Canandaigua’s future?

Perhaps, but not without places to charge them. And that’s what a planning group is trying to do — identify locations and seek out grants and private investments to make it happen.

David L. Keefe, coordinator of the nonprofit Genesee Region Clean Communities, has approached City Council as well as several key leaders in the community about potential locations. Funding and installing are steps down the road.

“I think it’s a no-brainer,” Keefe said.

The organization is in the midst of preparing for a planning grant, which is expected to be completed in February 2016 and submitted to New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which says electric vehicles can save drivers on fuel costs and reduce air pollution by driving greener.

The group also is looking for private investment in the chargers as well — the North Face store in Victor is one site that has a charger, Keefe said.

The chargers for electric vehicles are like a gas station for petroleum-consuming vehicles. The city of Rochester has 40 such stations, more than half of which received some funding from NYSERDA, Keefe said.

Canandaigua is considered a key location for chargers for many reasons, said Keefe, who is a Canandaigua resident. The city, plus some locations outside the city border, fit in with a potential electric vehicle transportation corridor.

And Canandaigua is a destination spot, for businesses and shops downtown as well as the lake and other tourism locations, Keefe said.

Canandaigua is among several other communities listed in a top five for electric vehicle chargers. They include Batavia, Victor, Brockport and Geneseo.

“It’s a viable area,” Keefe said. “We want to put stations where they will be used and where there aren’t stations now.”

A few of the key locations for chargers include downtown, the New York Wine and Culinary Center, Parkway Plaza, Kershaw Park, Wegmans and Finger Lakes Community College, Keefe said.

Several other locations also would work.

“We’re not going to come in and say ‘this is where they need to go,’” Keefe said. “We are seeking input.”

A preliminary presentation before City Council drew some support for the idea, including from Mayor Ellen Polimeni.

“This is something I think is needed in Canandaigua,” Polimeni said.

Members of the group, which include representatives from Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Rochester, the state Department of Transportation and other transportation planners, try to think of someone who has an electric vehicle and where that person may want to travel, Keefe said.

The source of this post can be found here

BMW’s electric vehicles (EVs) are in the headlines at the moment, with the plug-in i3 announced as the winner of the New Zealand Car of the Year in December.

But BMW EVs of a different kind have been making a much bigger impact this year: GoBabyGo, a charity organisation that provides and adapts ride-in electric cars for children with impaired mobility, delivered its 50th vehicle in December. The organisation was founded just 16 months ago.

BMW is a major sponsor, hence the exclusive use of baby-EVs with the blue-and-white roundel. Other key sponsors include Allied Medical, a mobility specialist, and website company Zyber.