Ford, Chevrolet and Smart partner with Coulomb ChargePoint and DOE for $37M Electric Vehicle Grant

Today Coulomb Technologies, the makers of ChargePoint, announced a partnership with three leading auto manufacturers including Ford, Chevrolet and Smart to provide customers of plugin hybrid and electric vehicles with in home charging stations free of charge. The project is being funded by a $15 million dollar grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in conjunction with the Department of Energy with an additional $22 million coming from installation and services sold by the company.

The combined $37M total of the ChargePoint America program will fund private ChargePoint installations for electric vehicle customers in addition to public outlets in nine major cities across the United States including:

• Austin Texas
• Detroit Michigan
• Los Angeles California
• New York City New York
• Orlando Florida
• Sacramento California
• San Jose / San Francisco / SF Bay Area California
• Redmond Washington
• Washington DC

While this is exciting news for Ford, Chevrolet and Smart, the program will surely benefit all OEM vehicle manufacturers who are preparing to launch electric vehicles in the coming years including Tesla Motors, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, anyone who currently owns or is planning on purchasing an electric vehicle or plugin hybrid will have access to public charging stations being built with money from this partnership grant.

Several early adopter cities such as San Francisco have been leveraging ChargePoint technology with prototype plugin vehicles from Toyota and Tesla, in addition to converted Toyota Prius, for the past two years. Coulomb Technologies currently operates the largest installed EV charging station network worldwide with recent expansion in Australia, Germany and other parts of Europe.

Beyond simply charging electric vehicles, ChargePoint stations serve to aggregate data on usage, efficiency and cost which is shared between vehicle owners, power suppliers and property owners who host the stations and take a share of profits. With data collected from each of these sources, Coulomb Technologies has created a smart grid capable of charging vehicles at off peak hours and potentially supplying power back to the grid. As an end user of ChargePoint stations, vehicle owners are able to track their own usage and charge levels remotely using smart phones and computers with the option to charge in ways that are more eco friendly.

This grant is exciting news for anyone interested in clean technology and represents a bold step forward by the Obama Administration. With this grant, the federal government is staking a claim in the future of clean transportation in America and in American automobile manufacturers. This kind of support for rapid development will help to address the chicken and egg scenario that some have feared might hinder the acceptance and widespread use of electric vehicles.

If you live in one of the nine major cities targeted for this expansion, keep your eye out for ChargePoint stations being installed on buildings, curbsides and parking lots this year! As an end-user, keep in mind that select upcoming Ford, Chevrolet and Smart vehicle models will include in-home ChargePoint stations offering 220 volt charging and networked data aggregation. For current EV owners or those considering a Nissan Leaf, Aptera, Tesla Model S or other vehicle outside the scope of this deal, you should still be able to get an in home station from ChargePoint for somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000. Anyone will be able to purchase a ChargePoint usage plan and begin using the public stations nation wide with hundreds already installed using a ChargePoint smart card system.

Deployment will start immediately and continue for the next eight months. Cars include Ford Transit Connect, Ford Focus, Ford Blue Oval Connect, Chevy Volt and the Smart Fortwo Electric Drive vehicle from Daimler Benz. 4,600 total network charging stations, 2,600 will be in the public and the rest will go to homes. All stations will include advanced networking and smart phone applications to locate and operate stations, get data. Part of this project will be collecting data to formulate long term trends for EV charging usage.