Electric Car Startup Gains Urban Foothold with 30-Minute Charges

Three years ago, Mariana Gerzanych, founder of the eco-friendly sedan service EnviroRide, began looking to add plug-in electric vehicles to her Washington, D.C. fleet, but the plan quickly hit a snag: drivers had nowhere to charge the cars.

It was the hitch that became the impetus for 350Green, LLC, the startup Gerzanych launched with business partner Tim Mason in 2008. The company aims to offer "garage-less" drivers — about 40 percent of Americans — the means to "fill up" their empty electric vehicles (EVs) in parking lots of grocery stores or coffee shops in less than 30 minutes, about 16 times faster than home chargers.

"We are seeing the biggest adoption of EVs in larger cities... [where] there is no space for home garages. How do you provide solutions to those people?" Gerzanych, CEO of 350Green, asked. "It's fast charging in places where people go on a regular basis."

According to 350Green, only one in six city cars in America is stored in a garage.

This month, the San Diego-based company announced plans for a national rollout of its public charging stations, with Chicago and San Francisco getting the first installations. The firm joins a market expected to reach more than $3 billion by 2017, according to figures by Texas consultancy Verify Markets.

Meanwhile, cities and retailers countrywide are clamoring to set up the public "pumps" ahead of the coming electric car boom, and federal stimulus funds are bolstering the young industry by spurring research and creating consumer incentives.

One Million EVs in Four Years

President Obama has called for 1 million EVs to hit the roads by 2015, and he recently pushed for legislation to turn a current $7,500 tax credit on electric cars into an instant consumer rebate — a timely consideration as automotive giants like General Motors, Nissan and Ford gear up to launch their all-electric models in North America in the next two years.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is largely paving the way for projects with its $230 million EV Project, a public-private partnership funded half by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and half by private financing. The program expects to create 1,200 new jobs by 2012 and 5,500 new positions by 2017 from development, manufacturing and installation initiatives.

San Francisco-based ECOtality, Inc. is managing $130 million of the project to develop and install 15,000 charging systems in Oregon, Washington, California, Arizona, Tennessee and Texas, plus the District of Columbia.

The EV Project also aims to deploy up to 5,700 Nissan LEAF vehicles and up to 2,600 Chevrolet Volt cars.

350Green to Launch in Chicago, Bay Area

350Green said earlier this month it would receive $1.9 million in grants from federal stimulus dollars for its Chicago project. The firm will spend $8.77 million to purchase, operate and maintain 280 charging stations at 73 sites in the metropolitan area, including the O'Hare and Midway airports, and it will not share revenues with the city or Illinois.

Both monthly subscriptions and pay-per-session rates will be available to drivers, Gerzanych said, with incentives for charging at off-peak hours on the electrical grid, although the firm is still sorting out the costs with local utilities. The installation of chargers must be reported to local utilities so the electricity suppliers can track locations and potential grid demand.