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Plug-In, No More

One of the takeaways of being a beta-tester of a plug-in hybrid car a few years ago was that it would become somewhat annoying to plug-in a car every night. The marginal savings due to reduced gas consumption probably wouldn’t have been enough long-term incentive for me to make sure my car was “plugged in” every night. Not charging may be OK with a hybrid, but it just doesn’t work with a pure electric car.

Satyajit Patwardhan, CEO of ConnectMyEV (formerly Green-Dot), developed a solution that uses conductive charging that allows a consumer to simply park over a charger. They have designed it to be safe, while delivering fast charging (1 to 2 hours for a car like a Nissan Leaf).

With a $1,500 expected retail price, Patwardhan suggests it is easy to retrofit existing electric cars and driveways to accommodate their technology. It’s not in stores yet, but fortunately, we had a chance to get a sneak peek of this innovative technology at a ProspectSV event.

2 responses to “Plug-In, No More”

  1. Ken Pyle Avatar
    Ken Pyle

    An excellent overview of the Green Dot solution can be found here:

    http://berc.berkeley.edu/hands-free-ev-charging/

    This article points out that the car and charger need to align within a 40 cm target (approximately 16 inches). I failed to ask whether there is an audible indicator on a Green Dot app that indicates to the driver that their car is aligned with the charger.

  2. Ken Pyle Avatar
    Ken Pyle

    And an update from ProspectSV on the progress ConnectMyEV (formerly Green Dot) has made.

    http://prospectsv.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Success-Story_ConnectMyEV.pdf (PDF)

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