The Volt is described in truly revolutionary terms not just for its ability to drive without oil or how it would be a halo car for GM but more importantly how it forms the centerpiece of an explosively growing suite of industries.

It is explained how people will seek electric cars primarily for cost savings once gas goes over $3 per gallon.

“At that level,” GM VP Jon Lauckner tells the author, “the cost of running a Volt in full electric mode will be about one-sixth that of a gas-driven car of the same size, 2 or 3 cents a mile rather than 12 to 15 cents a mile. We figured that, for most people, this means a savings of about $1,500 a year.”  The value of range anxiety reduction is also described as giving the Volt an advantage over competitors such as the Nissan LEAF.

A very critical and perhaps more important success factor with tremendous national impact though will be the interaction with the Volt and the grid

An executive from utility company Duke Power is quoted as saying, “if every American home had a Volt, he says, total power usage in the country would increase only about 10 percent.”  His company and many others are developing the tools to handle this and more importantly to achieve ideal load distribution so that charging isn’t done simultaneously by many cars at peak times.

The Volt will be smart enough to program time of charging in, but it is perhaps more important that utility companies be able to read the demand of all the country’s electric cars concurrently and be able to manage the charging elegantly.  The elements to obtain this orchestration of supply and demand to the benefit of all parties is beginning to emerge.

This is the rapid transformational growth stemming from the electrification of the automobile that is upon us, akin to the Internet of the early 90s.  Many startups are forming to deal with this new network of the smart electric car and smart gird interface.  As an early mover, GM has the chance for tremendous future success.

Our friend Volt executive Tony Posawatz was quoted as saying “our urgent challenge is to become the leading integrator of the sustainable transportation-energy ecosystem — to control the intellectual property governing the integration of the battery to the car and the car to the grid.”  The author translates what Tony is really saying is:

If GM plays its cards right, it could well incubate, and own, the new industry’s crucial operating and telecommunications standards, the anchors for thousands of smaller technology companies supporting the electric car’s components, information, and entertainment and charging needs.

Beyond the explosive growth of the lithium battery industry fueled by government loans and grants and A123’s IPO, GM has its own internal plans for future battery advances.

Former executive Bob Kruse explains that GM’s 3rd generation Volt battery will use non-liquid solid-state cells that have twice the energy density and half the cost. GM’s close collaborator Ann Marie Sastry at the U. of Michigan who has founded the battery start-up Sastry3 is apparently working on developing such cells.

“Liquid electrolytes present integration limits — also limits on energy density. We think that disruptive manufacturing techniques can improve performance dramatically, as in the chip industry.” Sastry said. “We aim to create a cheap, scalable process.”

Another electric car-induced industry will be for battery packs that have passed their vehicular lifetime but still have 75% storage capacity.

“It is easy to imagine warehouses full of used batteries sucking up wind energy and saving it for times the wind does not blow, or homeowners using the pack as backup,” said Pozawatz.

Home and public charging station companies will also proliferate. Highlighted is California start-up Coulomb Technologies who is pioneering the networked EV charging industry. The company’s CEO is former Cisco executive Richard Lowenthal who explains how networking software is the key to his company’s product.

“The key to our infrastructure and our venture funding is our network software applications,” said Lowenthal. “Our chargers are smart enough to consolidate payment from subscribers to all the various power companies, or tell drivers over their phones where they can find incentive pricing, and so forth.”

Software development is also a crucial new industry representing the brain of the Volt; choosing how to balance generator and battery ouptut against rapidly changing load demands from both the road and driver.

Furthermore, ensuring the car is able to communicate outward to the grid, service providers and the Internet is very important in the Volt. Here GM holds a fearsome advantage over its competitors by owing OnStar which as we know will be deeply knitted into the Volts operating system.

“We are focusing on the car and building in the capacity to roll up charging data, which can be placed at the door of the power company,” said Posawatz.

The killer app though could be supplied by a company called GridPoint that will supply the link between the electric car and the utility grid, allowing the utility companies to comprehend and act on the information provided by many thousands of electric cars like the Volt

“We see companies like GridPoint managing what utilities do with data behind the door, providing back to our drivers the charging, billing, and other services that will maximize the cost effectiveness and environment benefit of owning an electric vehicle,” said Posawatz

All of these new industries that the Volt represent a starting point for are also being subsidized by government in the way of the billions of dollars of loans and stimulus money already supplied by the Obama administration, guaranteeing their success.

As this story compellingly tells, we have arrived at a truly transformational point in history for the country, the economy, society, and the environment, and sitting right at the heart of it all is none other than the Chevy Volt.

Source (Inc)

If there is excess capacity at night and we are going to charge our cars at night, and studies show there is plenty of capacity, why are we so worried about infrastructure?
We’re really not. But there will come a day when there are millions of vehicles and the road and we want to make sure we’ve anticipated correctly what that will mean. It’s not those low numbers in the thousands were worried about.

Although at night there is capacity, there will be people charging during the day. There is a lot of excess grid capacity even during the day too, for many months of the year.

It comes down to about a dozen days a year, mostly during hot summer day afternoons from four to six PMs and for a few places very cold mornings when they get close to their peak power-generating capacity. And so even if low numbers of vehicles are charging at that time, we care about what that might mean for the grid.

So we want to make sure everything is thought through, that we have the right smarts on the vehicle and the right smarts on the grid and the utilities to be able to communicate with the vehicles to simply delay charging if it happens to be at a peak time. Consumers might agree to let utilities delay their charging in exchange for lower rates.

For people to benefit from this won’t they need a special variable rate meter?
Yes, time of use metering.

If someone doesn’t have one of these meters they can’t benefit from delaying charging, so how will you educate people?
That’s exactly the dialog we’re working on. Utilities are growing right now and evolving. I have a list of things I want them to consider doing in their states to help make the transition to electric cars smoother.

Historically people buy cars on how they look, behave and cost, and now you’re throwing in a fourth variable, and it seems having to educate people more deeply might make it harder to make a sale?
And for that reason I don’t want to overcomplicate it. I think we’ve learned a lesson in the last 12 months. When people ask me about public charging I say its a ‘nice to have’ but not a ‘must have’. The vehicle has been designed to plug into standard outlets. So it’s as simple as finding a plug. We want to go the extra mile and consider the needs of apartment-dwellers or people who want to extend their range and charge at work. We are going to look at some ways of enticing corporations to allow employee charging at work.

Also keep in mind the average cost of electricity is 10 cents per kwh so for most people without off peak considerations it will cost 80 cents per day to drive 40 miles. We’d like to get that to 40 cents, but never lose site of how easy the basics are.

I had the chance to speak with eTec’s CEO Don Karner about the coming electric car charging infrastructure revolution.

Tell us about your recent DOE grant and what it means?
The grant is to evaluate charge infrastructure and to try and develop a model for the effects of deployment of charge infrastructure in support of grid-connected vehicles.

It’s not a vehicle demonstration, and its not an infrastructure demonstration per se. The idea is to develop a mature charge infrastructure in five different geographic areas, diverse areas that have different demographics, different geography, different customs and value systems, different employers and to look at deploying infrastructure both at people’s residences after they buy a vehicle and in commercial locations which could be employers, parking structures or retail locations. Also deploying them in true street side public applications, city-owned parking that’s open to the public.

Then to look at utilization of that charging infrastructure such as which chargers are being used, and which ones are not. Why is one charger used more than another or one location more effective than another? How are people willing to extend the mission capability of the vehicle by using charging away from home?

Obviously if all you have is home charging then basically you have a limited radius within which you can operate the vehicle. The infrastructure outside the home both commercial and public is to allow you to extend the range of the vehicle and its usefulness. And with the idea of range extension we’ll also be deploying some level 3 fast charge infrastructure in commercial locations.

Doing that on a grid is the concept initially going in so you’re never more than a certain distance from a fast charger. Now that will be modified somewhat by use. There may be some areas that have a heavier use so you’ll have denser locations or multiple chargers at that single location.
The infrastructure will be initially deployed using a roadmap developed by involving stakeholders in the areas; employers and city government to help us determine locations.

We have partners on board that have the ability to come up with specific locations. For example, a company called CB Richard Ellis which is a major commercial real estate manager so they have millions and millions of square feet being managed for clients and millions of square feet that they own and lease out. So in every one of these cities they have a number of buildings with parking garages and they have retail outlets with parking lots that if the stakeholders say we ought to have to chargers in this area, they might be a source for us to locate the chargers.

We have BP that operates the AM-PM chain of gas stations, one of the things we wanted to try was does it make sense to put some fast charging in traditional fueling stations?

We’ll deploy the infrastructure then we’ll look at how it’s being utilized and also look at how we can provide better information to the vehicle operators are about where chargers are, what their availability is, and in order to develop a balance between information and actual hardware. Obviously if you’re completely ignorant about where chargers are you want to have a lot of them out there so that if you’re driving down the road you see them. But if you have electronic information that told you where chargers were and what their availability is and aids to help you do trip planning, are those going to make it easier for you to extend the range of the vehicle and therefore get you to use the vehicle more or is it just that you still need lots of chargers out there.

So these are all different aspects of the study and evaluation that we’d like to do over a 24 month period while all the data is being collected.

So we deploy charge infrastructure, deploy vehicles, get the system operating and we need a significant enough density of vehicles and infrastructure that’s really representative of what a fully developed electric vehicle economy might look like. So even though it’s a thousand vehicles in each city we still have to mindful of keeping it fairly tight because there are big cities. Then we collect data, store it in a database at the Idaho national lab and then we have various partners like Ohio State University and University of California Davis, the Idaho lab personnel plus all the other scientists in the nation’s science laboratory system to help us look at that data evaluate it look at successes and failures because many times you learn more from something that didn’t work than something that did. At the end, come out with guidance for the next 50 or the next 500 cities as to how they should most effectively deploy infrastructure.

Are you only using the Nissan LEAF vehicles in this study?
The vehicle side will be LEAF vehicles. The chargers that are being deployed are compliant with the SAE J1772 standards so they’re available to any vehicle.

But you will only be studying the behavior of those people driving LEAFs?
That’s initially where we are at right now. That may change over time and its certainly one of the things that the DOE made some stimulus awards to other car companies. None of them were in the cities that we’re operating in, but there may be some interest on DOE’s part to gather data in the cities where those vehicles are being deployed or to make vehicle available for purchase in the cities where the infrastructure is. You’ve got a built in infrastructure it makes sense to use that as a market for all electric vehicle whether it’s a Volt or a Ford transit.

Is your company a hardware producing company or are you coordinating the hardware of others? I’m wondering how your company fits into this.
We build both the level 2 and level 3 hardware. And we were very involved in the late 90s and early 2000s in deployment of EVs in response to the zero emission mandate in California. So we installed all of Chrysler’s infrastructure nationwide for the Epic minivan. We installed a lot of infrastructure for Ford, but not so much for GM. They typically worked through utilities to make that happen. We were buying others EVSEs in those days. We did make the 90 kw fast charger for the Chrysler minivan. Then when the auto EVs went away we had already been working with airport ground support equipment and material handling lift trucks on fast charging and we continued to do that over those 8 or 9 years. So we are in a number of airports through North America supporting both the airports and the airlines with material handling chargers across the country. We’ve got like 5000 chargers deployed throughout North America in industrial applications. We also have a line of chargers for neighborhood vehicles and things like that.

Now with the auto EVS coming back into play were rolling back into fast chargers to support the auto road applications and the level 2 EVSE to support both home and commercial and public charging.

So level 2 is the 240V?
240 V, 40 amp breaker supplying nominal 32 amps to the vehicle. That’s just the AC pass-though stuff. AC charging is typically level 2 and we believe that’s what’s necessary even with PHEVs a lot of folks are advocating just plugging them into convenience outlets, but we think there’s a lot of advantage to having level two charging for those as well. That’s the infrastructure that’s going to roll out. It’s going to be out there so you might as well make the vehicles compatible with it.

Aren’t there several companies out there making level 2 chargers?
Clipper Creek has been in it for some time. They were there in the late 90s as well, in fact we sold a lot of Clipper Creek equipment back then, it was called EVI. The same principles that were part of EVI have now formed Clipper Creek and the box is very similar to what is was in the 90s. Its basically just a smart contactor that checks to make sure everything is safe and then turns on AC to the vehicles.

Now there’s Coulomb and they have a public charging solution for street side parking. In fact they are part of our program for cities that want to do street side parking and collect revenue. Coulomb has a very neat revenue system.

How about level 3 chargers, there are claims about 10 or 30 minute fast charges, and EEStor says they can recharge 52 kwh in 5 minutes. Is all of this stuff realistically possible on today’s grid. Is your equipment able to do that and what are the special demands that such equipment would have?
Well, we’re capable of doing almost anything with respect to fast charging. But you put your finger on it, what’s practical? What’s practical is probably in the 40 to 50 kw range as a power level. And 200 amps as a current level, because you have to get the current onto the vehicle, and once you go above 200 amps, the cord and the connector get very large and some people talk about water cooling and it gets to be a very complicated device. So that translates to if you take the LEAF and you say it has a 30 kwh pack, if you’re charging at 40 kw if you came in at let’s say 40% state of charge and you want to go to 80% state of charge, you have to put in 12 kwh. I’ve got a 40 kw charger so its going to be about a third of an hour or twenty minutes. That’s a very reasonable power range. Can you charge harder? Absolutely, but then you start looking at whether you have the power available at a retail location where somebody wants to come and charge. Let’s say it’s a Starbucks and you want to come in and get a latte, do you really need to turn the vehicle around in 5 minutes? And if so, is Starbucks willing to double the electrical service that they have to supply that power? That hasn’t been our experience in the past. If that’s where everybody goes and it turns out absolute speed is of the utmost importance, then the market will adapt. What we’re looking at with the LEAF is in that 40 kw range and that fits very nicely in strip centers and other commercial locations. You can fit 40 kw into their existing electrical service and you don’t have to spend a lot of money expanding the electrical service.

Does the 40 kw charger run on 200 amps?
It would output a maximum of 200 amps. So if you had a battery pack that was let’s say 400V, to get to 40kw you only need 100 amps. So your cord and connector that connect to the vehicle would be limited to 200 amps. Let’s say you pull up to the vehicle that only has a 150 volt battery. I’m only going to be able to charge that at 200 amps so Im going to be limited to 30 kw. I may have more power capability in my charger but I’m limited by my cord and connector.

Most of the EVs, in fact all of them, all are in the range of 300 to 400 volts. To get the 40 kw you only need the battery to be above 200 Volts to stay below the 200 amps and virtually everyone is doing that.

I don’t think that 200 maps is very restrictive based on what coming to market.

Don’t most residential homes have 200 amp service?
It just depends on where you are in the country. We’re in Phoenix and yes 200 amps is pretty much the standard. A lot of homes out here actually go to 400 amps because there’s a lot of air conditioning load in Phoenix. So typically we don’t have any problem out here, plus all of the houses are relatively new.

If you go to a beach community in California, you may find only a 60 amp service on a little bungalow that doesn’t have air conditioning, for example. If you go to the northeast, an old brownstone there may only have a 50 or 60 amp service.

One of the challenges is to retrofit America with EVSE. In new construction many localities are going to the point where you have to put a 240V 40 amp service in the garage. Once you’ve done that actually installing the EVSE is a fifty dollar job. It’s no big deal. If you do it when the house is new, it’s easy. It’s the retrofit that’s expensive. We’ve got a lot of houses that will have to be retrofitted in America.

How about commercial places like parking garages, strip malls, and gas stations, do these places have a lot of current available?
Usually they’ve got plenty of electric service, the challenge there is typically you want the charger somewhere out in the parking lot and that power is not in the parking lot so you end up doing a lot of concrete and asphalt cutting and trenching with conduit but the electric service is there. If you do it as you build new facilities its very cheap because you’re trenching to put in light poles anyway.

When does your 2 year study actually start?
Nissan will be launching their vehicle in the fourth quarter of next year so well spend the next year basically working with stakeholders locating chargers and getting chargers installed in the commercial space. Then as the vehicles roll out we’ll be installing the chargers in residential places or if it is a fleet vehicle, the overnight location for that fleet vehicle.

Then we anticipate about 6 months of time to populate the vehicles and then we’ll operate in a data collection mode after that.

What are the 5 cities?
Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Phoenix and Tucson and also the interstate corridor between those two cities. In Tennessee there are three cities that form a triangle; Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Nashville.

No plans for NY?
Not as part of this project. Nissan will be looking at rolling the LEAF into NY but we won’t be studying infrastructure there.

Your company is national?
Yes. We cover all of North America.

What is the relationship with Ecotality?
Ecotality is our parent company and we are a wholly-owned subsidiary. Ecotality is a publicly traded company.

Do they do other things besides EV infrastructure?
Yes they have some other companies that do some fuel cell work and batteries and electronics assembly.

Is eTec a big portion?
We’re the biggest division of them.

Do you anticipate that the infrastructure rollout will take 10 years or more?
We’d like to think that coming out of this we’ll have some models in the commercial space that will show people there’s an economic benefit to them to install chargers whether it be an employer that receives employee benefits or a retailer that generates customer loyalty by having chargers. Or chargers that are installed with a subscription and revenue system like Coulomb’s.

This gives us the opportunity to demonstrate a number of value chains that can associate with the chargers. The hope is that when we come out of the project we’ll have demonstrated various way that people can make these chargers economically viable. And we’ll get some viral expansion with OEMS coming into areas to sell vehicles and retailers will decide to put in chargers to make money, and this thing starts to grow by itself.

So do you expect a strong national infrastructure in under ten years?
Yes. I think if we’re going to have a successful rollout of battery electric vehicles we have to have infrastructure to support it. If we’re going to roll out PHEVs and were going to receive benefit from them, again having a strong infrastructure is going to be important. If you have a 20 mile PHEV and you drive 18 miles to work, you’re going to want to be able to plug in at work so you run home on electric.

This infrastructure allows the vehicles to be used in more expansive missions to allow more of what people need to do on a daily basis, and so it’s going to expand the market for those too.

How much does a Level 3 charger cost?
The biggest part of the cost tends to be the installation, but generally in power electronics like that you can look anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar a watt. So you’re looking at 20 to $40,000. It’s on the order of what it costs to install a gasoline pump.

It seems like level 3 chargers are going to be a relatively small contribution to the overall charging infrastructure?
One would think so, that’s what you’d like to have happen. You’d like people to mostly charge at home and at night, that’s the prime objective. The usable available infrastructure is there to help them extend the usability of their vehicles.

The level 3 chargers provide an insurance policy, so if you decide you need to go farther you can stop for 10 minutes, get a hit, get another 20 or 30 miles and then you can do what you need to do and get home.

You could imagine its not like a gas pump, if you have one level 3 charger and everyone is pulling up with EV’s the lines would be miles long if it takes a half an hour to recharge.
Right, and that goes back to information, people need to know availability, because you’ll have several chargers within a relative short radius. If we’re seeing chargers continually busy during peak tines it’s a signal of success, but tells us we probably need to put in more chargers

People often wonder why GM needs to go through all of this effort.  I asked the following questions about it of Tony Posawatz, GM’s Volt vehicle line engineer.

A lot of people ask why is GM focusing on plugin readiness.  They say if its just like a plasma screen TV being plugged into an outlet in your garage, what’s the big deal?

There’s a little bit of history to this. We’ve made a lot of mistakes in our history and we’ve learned.  GM has already failed three times on infrastructure.

We have not succeeded on E85 yet its a really cleaver idea. I’m not referring to corn but the more advanced stuff.

Hydrogen…I don’t know what happened to the hydrogen superhighway, no infrastructure there.

Also I would argue for EV-1, we didn’t set up a good infrastructure there.

So we said fool me once, fool me twice…

The Volt was designed to make the infrastructure challenge easier.

The Volt doesn’t need public charging the Volt needs number one really good charging at home. Just plug it in? Not so fast my friend, the data we look at says.

Let’s say we don’t have a ready city initiative, or the region your going into, the education.  The electric company is a driver of special benefits too.  People would be losing out. Wouldn’t you want someone to set a standard that EV drivers get the best parking or the HOV lane?  This helps mitigate the initial cost because you get the extra value. You may get free charging. This is our effort because we have some leverage. We recognize that one of the issues with Volt is a cost issue.

If you live in a 1947 farmhouse in Connecticut and you want to plug it in, but it its not a dedicated circuit, and every morning when your vehicle is charging and your daughter turns on the hairdryer and the fuse blows.  Who’s going to get blamed?  Who are they going to call?  Its a very real situation. Many houses are not wired to code, they are wired in a very cheap manner.

We’ve learned, and we so much want to make this work we are not missing anything.

We are negotiating with some prominent companies to get the home ready… house installations, or if you want the plug moved or a dedicated circuit or a special meter or 220V.

GM won’t have its own wiring subsidiary?
No we will actively be involved in setting the requirements for a partner. There are companies that did the EV-1.

The 240 V cord has to go directly into the wall?
Yes, that’s by code.

In the showroom we want to have a system available in parallel to get the house ready.

This is why were so big on infrastructure. Number one to see if we can bring additional benefits to the customer, and to build this thing for the future so we can engage partners and build new opportunities that I can’t tell you about yet. Once your in someone’s home what kind of things well be able to do and you say to yourself, this is more than just a car.

The Volt will have some capacity to regulate its charging function, but more advanced features are expected to be coming in future generations.

I had the chance to ask Britta Gross who is GM’s direct of infrastructure some questions about this.

Are you involved in what technology will actually be in the Gen-1 Volts to communicate with the grid?
There will be some capability in the first generation volts to key in charging preferences. It won’t have all the smarts and broad capability of future generations. But it will have the smarts for you to be able to go into the vehicle and key in, for example, that you prefer to be charged after 7PM at night because you know the rates will be lower.

I am also working on how to (facilitate) that relationship between the utility companies and the new Volt buyers so they will be knowledgeable about their particular utility company’s best off-peak rates. We’re setting up systems now for utility companies to communicate with their customers about this.

So you may come home at 6 PM and plug-in the car, but your preferences are for charging to begin at midnight, and so your car will delay charging until then.

And, for example, if there is a different situation say for two weeks you need to be charged right away, let’s say your wife is pregnant, then you could override it.

Will the Gen-1 Volt communicate to the utility companies?
We’re looking at a lot of studies with OnStar right now, but there are other ways to do it. Through SAE and EPRI and our relationships with the utilities, we are very actively engaged in how we would communicate with the vehicle.

There are wireless means already, such as Zigbee, we’d have to have a chip on the vehicle that allows wireless communication about the charging and what’s happening. There are many ways out there to do this, we are looking through all of them to figure out what is best for consumers.

Will the Gen-1 Volt have something in it along these lines?
Well Gen 1 is a little different. The Zigbee chips aren’t even available today. These are nice to haves, but not must to haves. Even if the chip were available it would have to go through our very rigorous validation process which takes at least a year.

This involves facilitating the engagement of advocates, utility companies, local government and other stakeholders to increase and prepare for the adoption of plug-in cars like the Chevy Volt. They have collated a menu of strategic actions that city and regional leaders can enact to become plug-in pioneers that are available on an online database.

Project manager Laura Schewel says “With this project, we can help get the nation to President Obama’s goal of 1 million plug-ins by 2015…and maybe even beat it.”

GM’s Director of Infrastructure Britta Gross says “We know that many Volt drivers will never require a public charging infrastructure, instead depending on the Volt’s range-extender to carry them any distance beyond its electric vehicle range. But public infrastructure is very important for those who live in apartments or houses without garages where they can’t simply plug into a household outlet for a full charge.”

RMI has announced they are working on initiatives with Portland, Oregon; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Raleigh, North Carolina and plan to convene at least 20 cities in the near future to develop best practices.

The following are RMIs 15 “Must Have” Actions*
Suggested stretch target: 2% of registered vehicles by the end of 2015.

Barrier: Not enough cars in the pipeline, OEMs need proof of future consumer demand
1. Corporate/city/state fleets commit to buy a certain number of plug-ins (RFPs for major purchases or conversions).
2. Stakeholder group provides a place for interested consumers/fleets to register early, and put cash down to reserve plug-ins (cash used for readiness where possible).

Barrier: How can we manage this as a multi-sector, city-wide project?
3. Create collaborative stakeholder group within the community to help regulatory, commercial, and community interests align. Sign on to a clear regional plan (based on this menu!). Plan should give equal consideration to conversions.
4. Have one “champion” whose job it is to keep this group moving forward, who has authority

Barrier: How can we bring down upfront costs for consumers?
5. Work with banks and dealers to offer low-interest loans for plug-ins, based on projected lower operating costs from gas savings.
6. Bundle all key incentives at vehicle point of purchase (home charger vouchers, rebates, etc.)

Barrier: Consumer hesitation at diving into a new paradigm for mobility
7. Perks: access to HOV lanes, free tolls/downtown parking, reserved airport parking.
8. Create consumer, city government, local business and utility education plans including test drives and “quick lease” options to individual and fleet consumers as well as high profile drivers.
9. Reduced (or free) electricity rates for charging.

Barrier: Red tape around infrastructure installation
10. Fast-track permitting for charging stations.
11. Ensure new and reconstruction/renovation building codes support the operation of plug-ins.

Barrier: What if these cars exacerbate my peak load?
12. Tie provisions of free home and public charge spots, as well as free or cheaper electricity, to either utility override power or “no charge” times.

Barrier: Who will pay for infrastructure?
13. Local employers/retailers provide some charge stations at parking decks.
14. Install public charge spots in high-traffic zones and parking areas, either with public money (via utility or gov’t for the first 2% of vehicles) or private money that uses the stations to market.
15. Provide affordable and available—or free—Level 2 home-charger/driveway circuit installation.

Source (RMI) and (FastLane)

Also should you be so motivated you can Tweet with Britta Gross on Twitter @GMblogs later today at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time.

And as a reminder we have a special Plug-in Readiness Forum right here on GM-Volt.com.

According to GM spokesperson Pete Barkey, however, that isn’t the case.

He noted that the announcement was more of a “call to action” for places around the country to begin the dialog necessary to prepare the country to begin mass adoption of electric vehicles.

“We have not determined first markets yet,” said Barkey, “I wouldn’t infer that these would be the only two-or even the first two.”

Volt vehicle line director Tony Posawatz agreed stating “we haven’t decided” where the first Volts will be launched though encouraged “if communities show readiness they will be given special consideration.”

GM advises it certainly isn’t too late and the process to make communities plug-in ready has only just begun. Britta Gross is GM’s Manager of Fuel Cells, Hydrogen, & Electrical Infrastructure.  She offers us the following plug-in readiness checklist for use at the local level:

They have announced they have begun work with stakeholders in certain regions such as San Francisco and Washington DC to develop policies and enablers to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles.

Ed Peper, manager of Chevrolet said “the Chevy Volt is truly coming to life, but preparing the market for electric vehicles also requires capable partners from outside the auto industry.”

GM is advising that people like us begin to prepare our communities to be plug-in ready. This means several things. Key stakeholders involved in the discussions should include:
-State, city and county governments
-Electric utilities
-Regulators/public utility commissions
-Permitting and code officials
-Clean Cities coalitions

The following incentives are suggested to promote local consumer adoption:
-public and workplace charging infrastructure
-consumer-friendly electricity rates and renewable electricity options
-government and corporate vehicle purchases
-supportive permitting and codes for vehicle charging
-other incentives such as high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lane access

It was also noted that GM has being actively working with 40 national utility companies and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to pave the way for the Volt, and is playing a leading role with the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) to develop the standards for a vehicle charging interface.

Ed Peper also said “we know plenty of work still remains, both within and outside of GM, But today’s and other recent announcements underscore the comprehensive work being done to bring the Chevrolet Volt and other electrically driven vehicles to market – and they also highlight why we are so optimistic about the ultimate success of the Volt.”

To get the ball rolling right here on GM-Volt.com we have started a new Forum that people can use to begin organizing plug-in readiness initiatives in their own communities.

Source (GM)

Interviewed is GM’s Volt vehicle line director Tony Posawatz who was by the way also was recently elected co-chairman of the Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA).

Tony not only is building the Volt but plays a leading role in developing a nationwide electric car rollout plan.

He explained the importance of community to the Volt’s success. He said “we are looking at communities that exist that are willing to put all the pieces together. To me, the Volt is a remarkable product. But, if the other stuff–the communities, etc.–isn’t there, then we run the risk of failing.”

The article implies that GM may actually target the Volt launch to places in the country where such community exists, referring to buy-in from local utilities and municipalities to ensure there are incentives to buy electric cars and places to charge them.

There already exists a legislated federal tax credit of $7500 that will go to future Volt buyers. Additional local incentives mentioned in the article is for example encouraging communities to install charging stations.

Coulomb Technology’s smart charging station or Smartlet is given as an example of this. These charging stations interact wirelessly with utility companies to ensure car charging doesn’t strain daytime peak demand.

It has already been documented in a study that a 60% penetration of electric vehicles to the national automotive fleet will only result in a 7% to 8% increase in electric demand. If that occurs at nighttime, then no additional capacity will have to be placed online. However, carelessly adding this demand during daytime peak hours would necessitate the construction of dozens of additional US power plants.

It is also noted that no technical standard has yet been written and accepted for the process of rapid charging. At 240 V, the Volt will recharge in 3 hours as opposed to 6 hours at 120 V.

Posawatz amusingly imagines the day when a new Volt Geek Squad industry emerges whose service is to go out and put 240V charging boxes in peoples garages.

Source (CNET)

If was pointed out that daily charging of the Chevy Volt will increase the typical single family home electric usage by about 25%. The electric draw is less than that of a refrigerator/freezer or central air conditioning system.

If one takes peak charging rates of 80 cents/day, to drive 15,000 miles/year will work out to around $292 in total fuel costs. At off peak rates from ¼ to ½ of that it is possible to drive 15,000 miles per year for $73.

Furthermore the electric grid has ample capacity to handle this car. In fact Mr. Duvall stated that 10 million E-REVs will use less than 1% of the US electric grids total capacity.

And to answer one of the questions asked on this site, Version I of the Volt will not require data exchange to or from the utility company for charging.

Also aside from the financial benefits, there are obviously tremendous benefits to the country of not having to use imported fossil fuels, but being able to drive using the diverse portfolio of energy sources, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and renewables that our electric grid is powered through.