Electric car future may power a charging industry

As makers from Tesla to Nissan Motor Co jockey to dominate the next generation electric-powered cars, a fight on which companies will control the lucrative market to fuel them is just getting started.

U.S. President Barack Obama aims to put a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 as part of the new U.S. effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

Cars are sexier than gas pumps or charging stations, but as the history of the oil industry shows, fuel is big business. A million electric cars will need a lot of power and a complex system to make sure the grid is not overwhelmed.

"Your head starts spinning when you think of what the possibilities and opportunities are but also the complexity," said Bill Nicholson, who leads the electric vehicle initiative at Portland General Electric in Oregon.

He does not expect utilities to be big players in setting up charging stations although they will provide the power.

"There will be some pretty large players in the charging station infrastructure business who will then partner with some pretty large players in the information side of this, the IBMs of the world and others that do nationwide deployment of standardized charging stations," he predicted.

Politics are sure to shape the economics of the industry. The Climate Change bill that has passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is being considered by the Senate requires utilities to draw up plans for charging electric vehicles. It also sets financial incentives to set up charging stations and subsidies for people buying electric cars.

Many wonder if electric vehicle sales will take off. Automakers sold only about 160,000 hybrids, or 2.8 percent of total sales, in the U.S. this year through July, according to Autodata.

Plug-in hybrids, which are part of Obama`s goal of having one million electric cars on the roads by 2015, may account for 25 percent of auto sales by 2020, according to separate studies by the Department of Energy and environmental groups.

CHEAP TO RUN

Electric cars can be smooth, quiet and environmentally friendly. But they must deliver clear operating savings, since their price tag may initially be higher than conventional vehicles. Nissan roughly sees their operating cost equivalent to $1.10 per gallon of gasoline.

Skeptics say charging stations won`t be a viable business because drivers will top off batteries at home, except on long trips, and won`t want to pay a premium for electricity.

"We`ve found that about 90 percent of our customers` charging happens at home," said JB Straubel, Chief Technology Officer of Tesla Motors, maker of a $100,000-plus electric sports car whose 300-mile range is triple that of mass market vehicles from other makers due to enter the market late next year.

Proponents counter that charge stations will proliferate once there are a million or more electric cars on the roads. Most charging will be done at home, but some cars don`t even have a garage.

"If you live in San Francisco, 51 percent of all cars are parked curbside at night," said Richard Lowenthal, founder and CEO of Coulomb Technologies, which aims to sell about a thousand charging stations this year at $2,000-plus each.

sections: World News