A common refrain among skeptics of electric vehicles is that there’s a “lack of infrastructure” to support their widespread adoption.
On Thursday, Detroit will see a what could be the beginning of the end of that circumstance when NextEnergy introduces Michigan’s first ChargePoint America electric vehicle charging station. ChargePoint America is a program sponsored by Campbell, CA-based Coulomb Technologies to provide 4,600 electric vehicle charging stations to nine regions of the United States. Coulomb developed the technology and federal Recovery Act dollars, administered through the Department of Energy, support the implementation. The objective is to accelerate development and production of electric vehicles.
NextEnergy, located near TechTown on the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit, is a nonprofit founded by the state of Michigan in 2002 to serve as an accelerator for renewable and alternative energies. As of Thursday, it will also be the location of Michigan’s first (and, for the time being at least, only) ChargePoint America charging station. Other regions that will get a charge under this program include the San Jose/San Francisco Bay Area and Bellevue/Redmond, WA.
Gary Gauthier, NextEnergy’s director of business development, predicts that eventually the corridor between Detroit and Grand Rapids, MI, is going to be “reasonably well-populated” with plug-in electric vehicle charging stations. He says NextEnergy has been actively involved in a number of programs focused on Michigan and national readiness for the age of the electric vehicle, including the Michigan Public Service Commission’s PEV (plug-in electric vehicle) Readiness Task Force. Another is a Michigan group just forming, Get Ready Michigan, which will be a local chapter of a national group called Project Get Ready launched by the Rocky Mountain Institute. Project Get Ready’s mission is just what
