Electric Car Chargers for Central Parking System with 2,200 Locations

By John Addison (9/21/11)

Central Parking System and its subsidiary USA Parking have announced the rollout of electric car charging. Central Parking, with 2,200 locations and over one million parking spaces, clients include some of the nation’s largest owners and operators of mixed-use projects, office buildings, hotels, stadiums and arenas as well as airports, hospitals and municipalities.

Car Charging Group (OTCBB:CCGI) will install, own and operate the charge points. The chargers are made by Coulomb Technologies. Central Parking charge points will be part of the ChargePoint® Network so that drivers can locate the charge points through Google, chargepoint.net, smart phones, and EV navigation systems.

As a Nissan LEAF owner, I often use Coulomb chargers at various locations. For example, Saturday my wife and I wanted to meet friends 40 miles away for dinner. Using chargepoint.net I located a convenient charging location, then used Yelp to find a good restaurant nearby. At the charger, I held my RFID ChargePoint card near the location, authorized the charging unit unlocked, I connected the charger to my LEAF and went off to dinner. ChargePoint even sent me a text when the LEAF was fully charged.

A couple of weeks ago, I was on a Networked Smart Grid panel with Richard Lowenthal, Founder and CTO of Coulomb Technologies. I complimented him on never having a problem with his chargers and with the internet map being accurate. He told me that Coulomb now has over 5,000 charge points installed in over 20 countries. He regularly uses the ChargePoint network to save gas. Richard had driven his Chevrolet Volt from his home in Cupertino to the San Francisco Airport where he charged with one of 14 Coulomb charge points. Then he went to downtown San Francisco and again charged. When he returned home after 110 miles of driving, he displayed that 102 miles were in electric only-mode.

United States will Soon Have 10,000 Electric Car Chargers

“There are close to 17,000 parking garages in the U.S., and they will play one of the most vital roles in the development of a national EV charging infrastructure,” said Brian Golomb, Director of Sales of Car Charging. “By partnering with two of the most important companies in this sector – companies that understand the benefits of electric vehicles – we will move much quicker in the rollout of this nationwide infrastructure.”

Walgreens, the nation’s largest drugstore chain, is also having Car Charging Group install Coulomb Chargers at a number of locations. Car Charging Group provides EV charging stations at no charge to property owners/managers while retaining ownership, thus allowing their partners to offer their customers, tenants and employees charging services without incurring any outlay of capital. In addition, Car Charging Group’s partners realize a percentage of the charging revenue generated by the charging services paid for by the EV owners.

As part of the agreement, Central Parking has the right to purchase five percent of the Common Stock of Car Charging Group. “We are very excited about this partnership, because it will greatly expand the reach of our nationwide EV charging network,” said Michael Farkas, CEO of Car Charging Group.

This rollout will take us to over 10,000 car chargers installed in the United States. In comparison, there are over 100,000 gasoline stations, most with multiple pumps. “Electric vehicles are no longer a mirage – they are becoming an ever increasing presence on our roads and we are proud to be working with such an innovator in the EV sector,” said James Marcum, CEO of Central Parking Systems.

Through the end of 2012, Nissan is building 100,000 electric cars and GM is building 80,000. According to a new report from Pike Research, cumulative sales of plug-in electric vehicles will reach 5.2 million units by 2017. Car Charging Group uses the forecast of 40 million plug-in electric vehicles on the road by 2030.