Charging stations enhance retail locations
Green Fuel Technologies wants to market ChargePoint® Networked Charging Stations to retail locations. Many retail outlets like malls, big box stores, stadiums or theaters have huge parking lots with lots of potential for charging station placement.
Shopping and seeing a movie frequently mean leaving your car in a parking lot for an extended period of time. With the anticipated arrival of EVs and plug-in hybrids, having charging stations at these retail locations makes sense.
Most of the EVs and plug-in hybrids are currently high priced meaning that owners of these cars have money. Providing charging stations to show that your mall or theater caters to EV and plug-in hybrid owners, should bring in the type of customer every mall wants – ones who can afford to “shop til they drop”. Being able to charge up their battery without having to stop at a separate location, will be a big draw.
The ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations are a product of Coulomb Technologies. Coulomb like Better Place, will be using a subscription model for its ChargePoint network. Customers of Coulomb will have key fobs that allow them to access the charging station and that records the amount of energy used to recharge the battery.
Green Fuel Technologies is marketing ChargePoint stations to businesses, malls, retail outlets and other locations where people will park their cars for a significant period of time. Most batteries require a minimum of 15 minutes to collect a top off charge.
A top off charge will give the car owner more driving distance but doesn’t completely recharge the battery like an overnight charge will. It’s the equivalent of only putting $10 worth of gas in your car rather than the $25 it would take to fill it. You get where you need to go.
Both Better Place and Coulomb have been marketing their charging networks to the governments of cities, counties, states and countries. However, Coulomb has also been courting smaller markets like retail locations and gas stations.
We could eventually see a broad network of Better Place charging stations that span nations and states while Coulomb spans neighborhoods and everyday places of business like grocery stores, big box stores, and theaters. Two key fobs might be required but, then again, just as Visa and MasterCard can be used at every gas station I’ve ever visited, it probably won’t be long before they will work at both charging stations.
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