Wiring Wars: The Race to Charge the World's EVs

The wiring wars are getting serious. Better Place, headed by the charismatic Shai Agassi, has been making headlines around the world for signing deals to install electric vehicle (EV) recharging for, among others, Canada, Denmark, Australia, California and Hawaii.

It looked for a while that Better Place would monopolize world recharging networks, but other equally aggressive players have emerged, including Coulomb and Project Get Ready (the latter, a branch of the Rocky Mountain Institute, is more of a municipal advisor than a bricks-and-mortar company).

And there’s also ECOtality, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is making a mark with 10-15 minute fast-charging capabilities. ECOtality is the parent company of the Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation (eTec), which has signed up Vancouver, British Columbia and Tucson, Arizona (as well as Ireland) for battery car charging deals. It’s also working with the Renault-Nissan Alliance, another aggressive infrastructure provider (it just recruited San Diego).

ECOtality’s CEO, Jonathan Read, is a critic of Better Place’s plan to offer battery swapping. “First, it’s highly unlikely you will get a unitary [ie, one size fits all] battery among all manufacturers,” he said. “Batteries are proprietary and unique selling points for the companies—it was like herding cats just to get them all to agree to a single charging receptacle. Also, people are very personal about their vehicles and want to know that the battery they purchased and cared for is still in their car. If you could fast-charge your car in the same 10 minutes it takes to swap a battery pack, wouldn’t that make more sense?”

Read offers an intriguing vision of fast-charging being offered in the parking lots of Wal-Marts and Starbucks—places people are going to be visiting for at least 15 minutes. You’d have a swipable “charge card” (funny, that!) and for 60 cents to $1 get topped off as you score your caffe latte. It sounds eminently practical.

“We think charging will be stimulated by the government, but ultimately it will be offered by the private sector,” Read said. “Soon the charging will be ubiquitous in the retail landscape, and companies will be at a competitive disadvantage if they don’t offer it.” After all, if one supermarket offered to fill up your car while you shopped, and the other didn’t, where would you go?