Top US Electric Car City Could Soon Be… (You’re Never Gonna Guess It)

June 18th, 2013 by Nicholas Brown

The top electric car city in the US… San Francisco? LA? New York? Portland? What do you think?

Image Credit: Nissan

Indianapolis, the capital city of the US state Indiana and home to approximately 800,000 people, is interested in having all of the city’s fleet of cars replaced with electric and plugin hybrid (PHEV) ones. This could soon make it the #1 electric car city in the US.

After hearing about the announcement, this gave the CEO of Energy Systems Network, Paul Mitchell, the idea to put into motion a plan to purchase 500 US-built electric vehicles — possibly the Ford Focus or Nissan Leaf — and also to construct charging stations to support them.

Energy Systems Network partnered with Bolloré (which builds electric cars for the European market) and collaborated with the mayor for this project.

Bolloré is now investing $35 million to launch this program by next year. It will purchase the 500 electric vehicles and also the kiosks required for check in.

There will be 1,200 level-2 charging stations (more charging stations than cars) installed in 200 locations. Level-2 charging stations charge vehicles at 240 volts, and they provide vehicles with 10–20 miles of range for every hour that they are charged. They are the second-fastest chargers today.

“This program provides a great opportunity for downtown workers, residents and visitors to get around town in a car without owning one,” said Mayor Ballard. “This service allows a person, government or company to only pay for a car when they need and want it. They aren’t paying for fuel, insurance, maintenance and parking costs when the vehicle is not in use.”

Sounds pretty awesome. And I think this is a great move towards claiming the top US electric car city title. What are your thoughts?

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Tags: America's largest car sharing market, car sharing, Energy Systems Network, ESN, Indiana, Indiana car sharing, Indianapolis, Indianapolis car sharing, Mayor of Indianapolis, Paul Mitchell, unlikely city gets biggest car sharing service

About the Author

Nicholas Brown writes on CleanTechnica, Gas2, Kleef&Co, and Green Building Elements. He has a keen interest in physics-intensive topics such as electricity generation, refrigeration and air conditioning technology, energy storage, and geography. His website is: Kompulsa.com.

Stephanie Rodgers

My bus company only uses the best fleet systems available. It is necessary for us to have the most up to date and efficient systems. Without it we would be all over the place. Thanks for the post.
Pieter Siegers

Who said renewables do not create enough jobs?
Shiggity

Plug this plan into a car sharing model and it gets even better. You get the benefit of electric drive and the total amount of cars on the road decreases.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  China’s going there…
  
  “EV maker Kandi Technologies Group, Inc. announced that Hangzhou City, China, has started the construction of its first EV smart vertical parking and charging facility to advance its planned five-year goal of establishing a mini-public transportation system which will include up to 100,000 self-service rental EVs and all necessary service infrastructure throughout Hangzhou. (Earlier post.)
  
  The first facility is anticipated to be completed and in use in early July of 2013. According to the project plan, more than 30 pure EV smart vertical parking and charging facilities (including the additional EV sharing service network) will be built by the end of this year in Hangzhou City. Between 5,000 to 10,000 Kandi EVs will be deployed in Hangzhou within one year from the initial launch of the smart vertical parking and charging facility.”
  
  http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/06/hangzhou-20130617.html
  - Shiggity
    
    Certain US states, cities, municipalities are as progressive or more progressive than that. It’s just a ton of work and many of these places don’t have the budget necessary to start saving money, thus making them poorer.
    
    Sigh, it must be nice to have a federal government that could decide on something. It wouldn’t even be hard or that expensive to cover the federal interstate highway system with 240V chargers. They’re already built for 240V, it’s in their building code going back quite some time.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      We’re already installing chargers along the interstate system. A bunch of Level 3 chargers which are much higher voltage than 240 vac.
      
      Interstate Highway 5 from Canada to Mexico is likely to be our first major “electric corridor” and parts of it are already in place with the rest scheduled to be completed soon.