Forget Smart Cards: This Electric Car Charging Station Is Coin-Operated

Ask any electric car owner to tell you about public charging stations, and they’ll likely show you the wallet full of smart cards and RFID tags.

That’s because most electric car charging stations, with a few exceptions, only give access to pre-registered members.

But what if you could pay for your charge in the same way you pay for parking, with cold, hard cash?

It might sound like a simple idea, but we’ve just learned that it wasn’t until earlier this year that the world’s first mass-produced coin-operated payment machine specifically designed for high-power electric car charging stations finally went on sale.

According to Japan For Sustainability, Fuji Electric Co. of Japan, producer of many products including a range of rapid, direct-current charging stations, began to offer the optional coin-operated accessory to retail customers back in April.


Fast Charging 2011 Nissan LEAF

Designed to fit on any of Fuji’s existing charging stations, the unit allows electric car owners without a smart card to pay with coins instead of a credit card.

Just like a coin-operated washing machine at a Laundromat, a vending machine, or a parking meter, the charging station owner can set their own pricing scheme, while customers pay on a per-kilowatt-hour basis for the electricity they use.

The result is a readily-accessible charging station that can be used 24-hours a day, requires no smart card, or giving your credit card details out over the telephone.

Sadly however, the coin-operated addition isn’t cheap.


Electric-car charging network cards, photo by Patrick Connor, Portland

Japan For Sustainability reports that the optional extra costs an additional $7,317 on top of the price of one of its charging stations.

With so much of modern society moving away from cash, do you think charging stations that take dollar bills and loose change in payment for charging your car are a good idea? Do you prefer the wallet of smart cards, or think there's another solution?

Or do you find that, like us, you never carry any spare change around?


Source: GreenCarReports

DBT installs a New AC DC Fast Charger in France

DBT installed a new AC & DC Quick Charger in Chaponne, France early July

Located in a brand new BP rest area / gas station on A6 freeway, halfway between Paris and Lyon, this new kind of fast charger can deliver AC (Mennekes standard, up to 43kW) and DC (CHAdeMo standard, up to 50kW), that is for example for both a Renault Zoe and a Nissan LEAF

For now, the cost aof a full charge is 5 EUR

DBT has a new line of QC Chargers

Nothing mentions this charging station on BP website, I guess it is too new ...

Links:
- Technical Brochure
- Press Release
- DBT CEV ( Charging Electric Vehicles )

How To Use a Yazaki CHAdeMO Connector

Brad Gibson, a Settle LEAF owner, explains how to properly use a CHAdeMO Yazaki connector, which is often seen on Blink quick chargers

See this other post for more information about the CHAdeMO wiring diagram and the Yazaki connector

Nissan LEAF on the Road: Yokohama - Osaka 530km

A Nissan LEAF has gone from Yokohama to Osaka on a 530 km drive
The driver has uses fast charging CHAdeMO infrastructure (very developped over there) to fill up and you will note that even if all the chargers are from different companies/brands, he only has one RFid badge to run them all ! That's Japan ...




Yokohama to Osaka

Nissan DC Quick Charger

CHAdeMO fast charging port and plug

Freeway/Highway mostly

CHAdeMO charging station

Another kind of CHAdeMO charger

At night

Arrival in Osaka

REFUEL 2012 - Clean Power Motorsports Event @ Laguna Seca

What are you doing on Sunday ?

REFUEL 2012 is the 4th annual Clean Power Motorsports Event at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca for all Electric Cars and Motorcycles. Several members of SF BayLEAFs will be there, driving their LEAFs on the track, and while it is too late to sign-up for track time, it should be a great spectator event with all sorts of 2 and 4 wheel performance, prototype, experimental, and production EVs trying their skill on one of the world's most challenging racetracks.

The Tony Williams BC2BC car will be there on its return trip from Canada, and SF BayLEAFs has worked with Nissan to provide one of their mobile DC QC units for free quick charges at the track. A special guest for the event will be one of the Nissan LEAF Durability Engineers from their Arizona Testing Facility. He is entered to race that day, and would enjoy talking to SF BayLEAF members about how their cars are doing, and EVs in general.

REFUEL 2012

Nissan DC Quick Charger arrives in the US - Starting at $9,900 !!

Nissan / Sumitomo is making its now famous DC quick charger available in the US, through his partner AeroVironment, at the very low price of 9,900 USD.
Here is the official Nissan QC website: it presents the two chargers versions, basic & advanced, and also allows any business to request a quote for its installation.

Interview with CHAdeMO Association Chairman Toshiyuki Shiga

Interview with CHAdeMO Association Chairman Toshiyuki Shiga

CHAdeMO fast charge standard already has several years of experience, is currently used a lot in Japan, is spreading in California, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, and recently Nissan started to install 400 DC Fast Chargers given for free in Europe, starting last monday in the Netherlands and France

CHAdeMO Association Chairman Toshiyuki Shiga

First DCFC given by Nissan in France

First DCFC given by Nissan in the Netherlands

CHAdeMO connector been plugged in, this is secure and has been tested under heavy rain 

CHAdeMO connector surely in place and LEAF charging process started

Nissan LEAF has a CHAdeMO fast charge port, and almost 30,000 have been sold worldwide

First European DC Fast Charger offered by Nissan installed in France

Here it is ! The First DC Fast Charger out of the 400 Nissan is giving out in Europe has been installed in a supermarket in Haguenau, Alsace, France. It is the first step of a 6 DC Quick Chargers program called "Alsace Corridor Energetique"  in this French eastern region (All 6 chargers will be installed in Cora supermarket chain in this same region).

Obeying to Nissan's rules, the use of this CHAdeMO DCFC will be FREE for a year !

Alsace region has always played a leader role in France for EVs :
- It is one of the 2 regions in France matching the government incentive of 5,000 EUR (that makes 10,000 EUR of total rebate) for the purchase of an Electric Car
- Strasbourg, Alsace was the city choosen by Toyota and EDF to test the Prius Plugin for several years before it came out recently

More pictures on ChargeMap Facebook page

Cora Haguenau Supermarket

Ribbon cutting ceremony with Alsace Region, Nissan, Cora, and EDF representatives

Yoann NUSSBAUMER, Web entrepreneur and LEAF owner, was the first user of this DCFC

He developped a website called Chargemap to locate easily charge points and of course added this location

Yoann's LEAF charging :-)

Source: http://www.automobile-propre.com/2012/05/21/alsace-borne-recharge-rapide-haguenau/

EVS26 Wrap up - Great Minds Think Electric

EVS26 Overview




EVS26 with more focus on:
- Nissan LEAF
- Infiniti LE

DBT French partner to install Nissan DC Fast Chargers in France

In this video you can see that DBT, a company prodiving charging stations for years now, chosen by Nissan to deploy their DC Fast Chargers, has received some of them in their warehouse/factory: