The answer soon might be ‘very,’ as interest and infrastructure for alternative-fuel vehicles gain momentum in Connecticut
By Karen Singer
As the Electric Vehicles Infrastructure Council (EVIC) fine-tunes a final report for Gov. M. Jodi Rell, its work already has influenced key automakers and could accelerate the greening of state roadways.
On July 1, General Motors announced Connecticut would be an early market for the 2011 Chevy Volt, a hybrid car traveling as far as 40 miles on electricity alone.
Moreover, state officials are close to signing an agreement with Northeast Utilities (NU) and Nissan to develop infrastructure and policies for electric vehicles like the Japanese automaker’s soon-to-launch Leaf, which has a range of 100 miles.
“We feel a sense of accomplishment for a small group in the time we’ve convened,” says Peggy Diaz, legislative and administrative manager at the state’s Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) and facilitator for the EVIC, which was formed by the governor’s executive order in November 2009 to pave the way for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids in Connecticut. The council has members from state agencies and utility companies, and is co-chaired by DPUC Chairman Kevin DelGobbo and Department of Economic & Community Development head Joan McDonald.
Diaz says the final report, due September 1, will outline five state goals, including attracting auto manufacturers to Connecticut, streamlining the registration process for electric vehicles and preparing comprehensive legislation for the 2011 session with recommendations for opening a DPUC docket to discuss time of use rates for charging and metering EVs and plug-in hybrids, building code standards for charging stations and incentives for electric vehicles such as sales-tax cuts and access to high vehicle occupancy lanes.
Around Connecticut consumers, businesses, state and municipal governments are switching to vehicles with cleaner emissions.
Connecticut ranks tenth on a list of states where hybrid vehicles are most popular, with 1.21 new hybrids per 1,000 residents, according to hybridcars.com’s December 2009 Dashboard Tally. The national average is 0.87.
R.L. Polk & Co. data provided by NU show 23,148 gas/electric hybrid vehicles (cars and light-duty trucks) and 30 electric vehicles in Connecticut as of October 1, 2009.
“People are very, very interested in any kind of alternative fuel technology,” says James T. Fleming, president of Connecticut Automotive Retailers Association (CARA), a trade organization representing 240 major dealers.
\drop cap\In New Haven, the city has been “transitioning its fleet to hybrids,” says Christine Eppstein Tang, director of the city’s Office of Sustainability. There currently are 12, including a Toyota Prius driven by Mayor John DeStefano Jr.
Of the 3,554 vehicles (in the current fleet) the state Department of Administrative Services (DAS) buys, maintains and leases to state agencies, 46 percent are flex fuel and 11.96 percent are hybrids. The hybrids include 325 Priuses and around 100 Honda Civics, according to Frank Sanzo, director of fleet operations.
Erin Choquette, legislative and administrative advisor to DAS Commissioner Martin Anderson, explains the purchasing process is a balancing act between agency needs and state and federal requirements. Federal law requires 75 percent of new purchases to be alternative fuel vehicles — “and hybrids don’t count,” Choquette says. “The state wants vehicles to have an estimated highway mileage of 40 miles per gallon, and they encourage us to buy hybrids, but on or after January 2012, they’re supposed to 100-percent alternative fuel vehicles, hybrids or plug-in electrics.”
The state’s Department of Transportation (DOT), which does its own purchasing, began operating the state’s first two diesel-electric hybrid buses in Hartford in 2003, and has added a fuel cell bus.
“We’re getting four more fuel cell buses before the end of the year,” says DOT Transit Administrator Michael Sanders. Each costs around $2 million, and a federal research grant is picking up the tab.
Forty-two buses, or about ten percent of the fleet, will be hybrids by February 2011, including 17 40-foot diesel electric buses in Waterbury, 14 forty-foot diesel electric buses in New Haven and six 60-foot diesel electric buses, with three each in New Haven and Hartford.
Before the end of 2010, Sanders says, DOT will purchase 17 Ford Escape hybrids for its road supervisors, who already drive a dozen Priuses and Ford Escapes.
DOT also provides incentives to help municipalities purchase alternative fuel vehicles. This year its Connecticut Clean Fuel Program grants included $6,000 to Madison for a Prius, $8,200 to New Haven for a hybrid electric refuse truck, $105,600 to Middletown for a plug-in hybrid school bus and $56,000 to West Haven for four Ford Escapes and four Honda Civics.
The Greater New Haven Clean Cities Coalition, Inc. (GNHCCC) has a $13,195,000 award from the U.S. Department of Energy for its Connecticut Clean Cities Future Fuels Project, involving 30 Connecticut municipalities and companies.
Grant money is buying 140 compressed natural gas cabs for the Yellow Cab and Metro Cab companies, among other alternative fuel vehicles, and paying for a liquid natural gas station at Enviro Express in Bridgeport and a hydrogen station at the Hartford DOT facility built by Avalence Hydrogen Energy Systems of Milford.
“We also are planning to install two biodiesel stations at Bradley and at the Shell station next to the airport, which will have electric charging for plug-in hybrids,” says Lee Grannis, GNHCCC coordinator and recipient of the award, which is being shared among the state’s four clean cities coalitions.
The GNHCCC also is participating in a pilot project to install several 240-volt Level 2 charging stations in New Haven garages by this September. The city’s Office of Sustainability, the United Illuminating Co. and New Haven Parking Authority recently placed signs at entrances and exits to the Union Station, Crown Street and Temple Street garages, asking people to call 203-499-3348 to share their thoughts about buying an electric car and charging it in one of the garages.
The feedback will determine placement of the charging stations.
Roddy Diotlalevi, UI’s senior director of client services, says the utility is working with Fairfield, Bridgeport and Stratford officials on locations for installing public charging stations.
NU has three charging stations at its facilities in Berlin and Hartford, and is planning to place 25 more elsewhere by the end of the year, according to Watson Collins, NU’s manager of business development.
One location is the public garage behind the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, a Level 2 charging station made by Control Modules of Enfield and donated to the state by Control Modules and NU.
When the garage at 360 State Street, New Haven opens this fall, it will have five standard 120-volt outlets for Level 1 charging for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, for use by residents and non-residents.
Among other EV infrastructure initiatives, Westport is seeking funding for an electric charging station at the Saugatuck train station, powered by solar panels on the roof.
In 2009, Propark America installed a 120-volt Level 1 outlet in its New Haven garage.
Whole Foods Market has four free 120-volt Level 1 outlets at its new Darien store and will have charging infrastructure at a store opening in Fairfield in 2011, says Tristam Coffin, the company’s regional green mission specialist.
At Gateway Community College, a course covering electric drive vehicles debuts this fall, part of the school’s new Alternative Energy Transportation Certificate program.
“These classes are the wave of the future, and I think they will be quite popular,” says Instructor Anthony Rish, who developed the program and has been training Gateway students to work on hybrids and other renewable fuel vehicles since the 1990s.
After attending a recent federal Department of Energy forum on electric vehicle infrastructure in Washington, D.C., Grannis came away thinking Connecticut is doing better than many states.
“We didn’t get any of the big grants, but our team at the EVIC has worked very hard to get the Volt and the agreement with Nissan,” he says.
“Our discussions with GM go back probably a year and a half, when they wrote a letter of support when we applied for that federal grant we didn’t get [to set up a network of charging stations],” NU’s Collins says, adding formation of the EVIC and media interest “helped move Connecticut up the list.”
The conversations continue with GM, Nissan and other automakers with EVs and plug-in hybrids in the pipeline. “What we’re looking to do soon to help our towns and municipalities and customers get vehicles is to coordinate purchases into a bulk order to get early deliveries,” adds Collins.
Grannis believes Connecticut is far ahead of other states in businesses making charging stations and products with electric and plug-in vehicle applications.
“We’re leaders in this stuff,” he says. “We have the industries. We just have to really make them more robust and sell their abilities.”
On July 13, 2010, Fairfield-based General Electric unveiled its GE WattStation, a Level 2, 220-volt smart charger for home and commercial use.
On July 16, ITT Interconnect Solutions introduced a connector for electric charging applications based on the new Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) J1772 specification approved in January 2010 as the U.S. standard for Level I and II electric vehicle charging. Options include 75A/240V, 30A/240V, 15A/240V and 15A/120V.
“We are the only company making a J1772 that is UL-qualified and certified to 75 amps,” says Michael Gardiner, product manager at ITT’s Watertown office. He expects demand for the connector to grow “as the business grows, and as infrastructure is built to support the electric vehicle market,” and says ITT is in “conversations” with Control Modules about using ITT’s new connector in its charging stations.
Elsewhere, Yardney Technical Products Inc. of Pawtucket is mulling over the best way to commercialize its high-tech batteries, used by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Defense and other government agencies.
“We teamed with CODA, the electric-vehicle company, with a proposal to the Department of Energy to build a facility in Enfield, but we were not selected,” says Kris Johanessen, director of business development.
Yardney remains in contact with CODA, and recently bought production equipment from Imara Corp., a California company making lithium ion cells and batteries.
“Our head is down and focused on main applications for military and aerospace,” adds Johanessen, “but these other things keep knocking at the door and we’re certainly looking at them.”
At least two fledgling Connecticut businesses are taking a different tack.
“We are in the conversion business, and are going to be coming out with a solution for the 250 million vehicles already on the road,” says Frank Kuchinski, vice president of marketing at Poulsen Hybrid, LLC of Stratford. The company is developing a product with a patented system of electric motors mounted on the rear wheels to provide supplemental power to conventional vehicles.
Says Kuchinski, “We’re in the start-up phase, getting ready for a test fleet.”
Blu Print Automotive Conversions, LLC of South Windsor offers three types of conversions: installing an electric drive system working in conjunction with a vehicle’s gasoline drive train, replacing the gasoline drive train with a plug-in electric system and making a hybrid a plug-in vehicle with a charger and a more powerful battery pack.
“My goal is to really outdo what the automotive manufacturers are doing and convert existing vehicles rather than have people purchase new ones,” says owner Lawrence Phillips, a former aerospace machinist and commercial race car fabricator who formed Blu Print last year. “We can convert your car to 100-percent electric with a 100-mile range, at a fraction of the cost to buy an EV, if you can find one.
“It takes four tons of carbon to make a 3,000-pound car. Let’s recycle those on the roads and convert them into EVs, creating green jobs at the same time,” he adds.
Phillips, Kuchinski and other electric vehicle conversion enthusiasts would like the EVIC’s final report to recognize their efforts.
“The draft [version] is lacking in specific language about electric vehicle conversions,” Phillips says. “We think the state of Connecticut does recognize my company and Frank’s for the potential to create some industry, but we need some tax incentives, like they have in other states.”
CARA’s Fleming thinks Connecticut “is going to be a great market for electric cars” but it needs incentives to purchase the vehicles as well as enough charging stations for consumers and infrastructure for dealers to “service, charge and market” them.
“My dealers are telling me people come in and ask about electric vehicles,” Fleming says. “They’re curious about how it is going to work, and we need to educate them.” The education process begins in earnest this November at CARA’s annual International Auto Show at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford.
This year’s theme is alternative fuel technologies, and one of the cars on display may be a Columbia Electric Victoria made by the Electric Vehicle Co. of Hartford and similar to the one President Theodore Roosevelt rode in during the country’s first presidential motorcade, which traveled through Hartford on August 22, 1902.
Diaz says the EVIC hopes to have final draft of its report finished by the council’s August 16 meeting, which will allow public comment.
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