San Francisco's Mayor Set To Unveil EV Charging Stations for His City

San Francisco's Mayor Set To Unveil EV Charging Stations for His City

By John O'Dell February 18, 2009

It's short and sweet and leaves us wanting more: The mayor of San Francisco has called a press conference for later this morning to "unveil electric vehicle charging stations for the City and County of San Francisco, City Car Share and Zip Car plug-in hybrid vehicles."

We're not clear at this hour whether Mayor Gavin Newsom will show off a single EV charger or announce that a whole system has been or is being installed around the city (which is also the county).

Also not clear is what plug-in hybrids the mayor's office is talking about: none of the major automakers have begun manufacturing plug-ins yet and the conversion companies that are doing such work have only turned out a few hundred at most.

Perhaps the two car-sharing services mentioned in the mayor's announcement have plans to buy a bunch when GM and Toyota put early versions of their promised plug-ins (the Chevy Volt and a Prius plug-in) into fleet service later this year and the mayor is getting us warmed up for the main event.

We do suspect, though, that the EV charger to be unveiled is a model made by a Bay Area company called Coulomb Technologies, which already is installing on-street chargers in nearby San Jose -- and which said late Tuesday that it would be issuing a statement of its own just after the mayor's press conference begins.

In any case, the press conference is at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, and we'll bring you the news as soon thereafter as we can.

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.