Hi Seth,
I found your name on the WSDOT sustainable transportation web page. I
hope you are the right person to receive my suggestion regarding ESVEs.
As I'm sure you would agree, we need more high power ESVEs along our
freeway corridors, if we ever want EVs to become useful for long range
travel. Expecting private enterprise to provide them has been lackluster
due to the currently low demand and the high installation costs.
On the other hand, using taxpayer money to provide high power ESVEs has
only received moderate public support. Often, we end up with a
compromise of medium power ESVEs and not enough of them to be reliable
for someone travelling.
With 60-80 kWh batteries becoming common in new EVs and 100+ kWh not too
far off, we need to be providing for the future: 200kW or better ESVEs
so that 80% charges can happen in at most 30 minutes at most. Putting in
50kW ESVEs is a complete waste of taxpayer money - obsolete when
installed.
My suggestion is to start a public-private partnership. Here's how it
would work. This is based off the French autoroute system, where service
areas are provided every so many kilometers comprised of fueling,
convenience stores, eating places, and more. I don't know the details,
but the service operations are leased out to the various vendors and
privately operated. As well, these areas work much like our rest areas.
There are dedicated ramps which go nowhere except the service area and
it is easy to exit the autoroute, do what you need, and get back on. No
stoplights, no hunting for the right services. In a word, quick.
In our case, we could adopt a similar model. Expand the usage of our
rest areas to include leased out services - food, other shopping, etc. -
and add new rest areas so that there is some maximum distance between
them. Loan state funds to selected vendors to install several 200kWh
ESVEs at each rest area. As part of the the vendor agreement, their
lease includes fees to cover the amortized cost of installing the ESVEs.
(I think they would be willing to pay a premium; after all, they have a
captive customer base.) After some years, that would result in a net
zero cost to the state.
We need to do something. The current track is providing mediocre results
and is costing a lot. I realize that there are potential legal issues
with this idea such as change of use of rest areas, lending of state
money, arranging public-private partnerships, cost of constructing new
rest areas. Could it work, though? Has this already been proposed? Would
the public provide a higher level of support for this?
Thanks for your attention.
Peri Hartman
_______________________________________________
UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub
http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
