"Coulomb Technologies to Test Charging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles" Green Car Advisor

Coulomb Technologies to Test Charging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles

By Scott Doggett, Contributor

In the first of an anticipated flood of announcements from the national plug-in hybrid confab that starts tomorrow in San Jose, California, Coulomb Technologies announced today that it has developed a smart charging infrastructure for plug-in vehicles and will begin testing it in San Jose later this year.

The company, located in Campbell, six miles southwest of San Jose, said its charging stations will be able to serve extended-range electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles, and battery-electric vehicles such as like the Tesla Roadster, which undergoes final assembly in nearby San Carlos.

Coulomb CEO Richard Lowenthal told Green Car Advisor today that his company will be installing five charging stations in San Jose as part of a trial to be used by the few people who are driving EVs now. He said the company is awaiting safety approvals, which he expects to have in November or December.

As for how rapidly Coulomb could deploy the stations should the trial prove successful, Lowenthal said Coulomb "designed these products to be installed with the same skills it takes to install a street light, so anybody who could put light poles in concrete and hook up electricity could install them."

Because Coulombs' network technology is wireless, as soon as a charging station is powered up, it appears on the network and users' GPS-enabled devices and navigational systems.

Working with the city of San Jose, Coulomb came up with the innovation of connecting the charging stations to streetlight poles and drawing power from wires within the poles, eliminating the need to sink wires into the concrete. Installing the stations this way is "very easy," Lowenthal said.

Although Tesla Motors has begun producing plug-in battery-electric cars and other automakers have electric vehicles in the works, many EV owners will likely have difficulty finding places to recharge their vehicles away from home. Coulomb hopes to provide the solution with their network, which Lowenthal described as a seamless, scalable, reliable and cost-effective solution.

In a statement, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed said that through "an innovative partnership with Coulomb Technologies, San Jose is demonstrating environmental leadership and fostering the growth of our clean tech businesses."

"Our goal is to be the first city in the United States to demonstrate and offer opportunities for residents to charge electric vehicles from streetlights and other infrastructure," he said.