Most Exciting Technology/Company At EVS27 — EP Tender
There were some pretty wicked cars at EVS27, cool wireless charging technology, Brammo electric motorcycles, and more, but the technology offering that excited me the most was what EP Tender is looking to bring to market.
It’s nothing scientifically revolutionary. Actually, it’s quite simple. But it fills a gap in the new EV arena perfectly, and I think it could convince a lot more people to go electric. It could also allow EV owners to enjoy their electric cars more days in the year.
Below is a video of the interview I conducted with founder/CEO Jean-Baptiste Segard, which includes pretty much all of the details, but following the video is also a text summary of what EP Tender is looking to bring to market.
The EP Tender website actually very succinctly states what this contraption is (in French, but the translation from Google looks quite good): “in plain language: a generator mounted on a small trailer and available for rent (Tender’Lib ® ) …”
As Jean-Baptiste notes, an electric vehicle is a completely adequate vehicle — an excellent vehicle even — almost every day of the year for most people — 360 days a year, as he says. The downside of the vehicle at the moment is that people sometimes need or want to make a long-distance trip by car, and that’s not as practical with electric cars as it is with gasmobiles (at this point in time). Even if the charging is available along the way, going by EV can mean adding hours to your trip in order to charge up along the way.
One option people have is simply renting a car for those trips. But renting a car isn’t cheap, and it also means you have to leave your wonderful electric car at home and drive a gasmobile.
EP Tender’s solution is, frankly, the best I’ve seen (other than buying a Tesla Model S). All you do is rent EP Tender’s range-extending trailer for your long drive to or from your destination. You leave the trailer at a location at your destination, and then you do the same thing on the way back. So, you don’t have to hold onto (or pay for) the trailer during your time in this other city — only for the long drives.
The concept is just getting off the ground, but with a background in finance, Jean-Baptiste already has the pricing figured out. It will be €10 per day + €7 per hour that you run the engine in the trailer.
Based out of France, EP Tender is starting there. (France also happens to have the largest number of electric cars of any European country.) However, the goal is to then expand to other European markets and then to even expand across the pond to the US, across another pond to Japan, and anywhere else there’s a strong EV market.
I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on EP Tender. Stay tuned to CleanTechnica for more news on the company as it comes along. For now, at least, below are two more videos. This first one is from Jean-Baptiste and demonstrates how well the trailer performs when the car is in reverse (and includes a wonderful musical selection):
And here’s a music-less demonstration on how to use the trailer, which also includes some reverse driving action:
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Image Credits: EP Tender trailer for EVs, published under a CC BY-SA license that allows for republishing and even modification as long as the images are republished under a CC BY-SA license and credit is given to Zachary Shahan / CleanTechnica / EV Obsession (without removing the links).
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