Ford and Schneider Electric Collaborate on EV Charging Station

Photo Credit: Schneider Electric EVLINK

Ford and Schneider Electric have teamed up to provide a charging solution to full electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids (like the well known Chevy Volt), and Ford’s new Electric Car – the Focus Electric.

The charging station built by Schneider Electric was engineered for the European markets with both Ford and EU safety standards in mind. Ford Focus Electric vehicles will be for sale in Europe by next year as well as in the United States in 2013. The charging station called EVLINK will sell with various options including a 5 year warranty, native language installation, and regional-specific tech support.

The EVLINK itself was designed to provide fast, reliable, and convenient charging of EV’s for residential homes and businesses alike all across Europe. With a Ford Focus EV, a full charge from an EVLINK charging station will only take approximately 3 hours, according to Schneider Electric. Verified figures from Schneider claim to deliver about 162 kilometers of driving range with an energy efficiency of almost 16 kWh/100km.

Despite there being nay-sayers about the future of electric vehicles including on the Triple Pundit and on the MarketPlace.org, Schneider contests that the future of EV’s is bright.

The two companies, Ford Motors of Europe and Schneider Electric, seem to agree that the collaboration will help to grow the European electric vehicle industry/market.

Of course, one of the benefits of fueling your own car with electricity is having the opportunity to purchase electricity from renewable energy sources. Supporting green power while driving an EV maximizes all the environmental benefits of driving an electric vehicle by making it possible to drive C02 neutral.

Photo Credit: Schneider Electric EVLINK

Green Note:
RheinEnergie is a company that installed a 1.2 megawatt solar system on the roof of a Ford building in Cologne, Germany just a while ago. The energy generated from the recent solar installation will directly provide charging for the Ford Focus Electric models in 2013.

Photo Credit: Schneider Electric

Ford Focus Electric cars will be for sale in Europe and the United States by next year, as stated earlier. However, prices and range anxiety are the biggest factors people cite when asked about possibly switching to electric vehicles. Tax credits in the US and EU could help sway more people to zero emission vehicles, but sales are not expected to match those of their gasoline counterparts for quite some time.

Regardless of all the pessimists that claim EV technology is not worth the money, competition from various car manufacturers across the globe will help bring costs down eventually and hopefully they can increase the range too. The Focus Electric does boast that it can fully charge in 3 hours, which they say is half the time it takes to charge a Nissan Leaf and is an example of a competitive breakthrough.

One thing that is clear about the EV industry is that it is trying to overcome the label of a ‘niche-market’. Once all the EV manufacturers including Tesla, Nissan, Chevy, Ford, Mitsubishi, Toyota, and others begin to innovate and really compete with each other, we may finally see prices that are affordable to the everyday average citizen. The company that can do this first is likely to profit handsomely and we’ll all have the benefit of reduced overall emissions and a healthier environment for everyone.

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JT (424 Posts)

Just living life in Portland, Oregon and enjoying every day that goes by. I love the environment, and I love community, and I love being able to share my experiences and perspective with the world. Follow @EnvironmentBlog

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