'Project Get Ready' Got Set and Went in Houston

Houston is making an electric vehicle recharge grid. How do you actually go about accomplishing such a massive undertaking? By starting somewhere. By doing something. This month the City of Houston will unveil ten charging stations to go with their ten conversion plug-in Prius (what's the plural of Prius? Prius?). To generate public interest, they will make seven of the charging stations available to the public (at no cost for the first year). 

What's evident in talking to James Tillman (who runs the program for Houston) is that cities are in hot competition, vying to be one of a limited number of launch spots for the first production scale electric vehicle, the Nissan Leaf. To do this, a city needs to muster a commitment from within its boundaries to buy 300 vehicles by this time next year. The City of Houston can take care of the first 100 by buying them and rolling them into their fleet. To complete the order, though, it needs the private sector and other organizations to help. To induce them, the City is seeding their real estate with an initial round of charging infrastructure. 

James provides some examples of the creative thinking that is getting Houston ready to be an electric vehicle town, while at the same time saving money. Example One: By consolidating the city's fleet requirements, and using a scheduling system to manage fleet use, Houston was able to halve the size of the fleet, which (among other benefits) created the budget headroom to purchase electric vehicles.  Example Two: By putting parking enforcement officers in less costly low-speed vehicles, Houston saves money on capital fleet costs, even as it creates a reason to install additional charging stations. 

There is much to consider in a venture like this: range anxiety and charging stations between the cities, permitting time for home charging stations (how long are you willing to wait for a permit to put a charging station in your house when you've just bought an electric car and want to go home and plug it in?),. Houston is tackling these issues, and anxious to prove that this oil town has a clear grasp of its electric future.

Photo: Coloumb Technologies