Riiiing, Riiiing: Your Charger's Ready, Ma'am, Just Turn Left at the Next Light...
By John O'Dell February 25, 2010Company Develops EV Charger App for iPhone; Payment Cards to Follow
It had to happen.
There's now an iPhone app to help EV drivers find and use charging stations.
Networked EV-charger pioneer Coulomb Technologies has unveiled a free application that lets owners of Apple's smartphones locate the nearest Coulomb ChargePoint electric-vehicle charging station and check if the station is available or if it's already in use or out of service.
Screenshot of Coulomb Technology's iPhone application shows that it also offers trip mapping that routes EV drivers close to the company's chargers. Coulomb has more than 600 chargers in the U.S., Europe and Australia.
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The Campbell, Calif.-based company, which developed the feature, will do the same for owners of other smartphones such as Droids and Blackberries, said Coulomb spokeswoman Anne Smith, adding that release dates for other phones haven't been determined.
Closely held Coulomb, which said earlier this month that it has received an additional $14 million in expansion funding, is looking to bank on what it believes will be an expanding EV-user base by both deploying more ChargePoint stations and making it easier for customers to use them.
Coulomb has developed both solar-powered and wind-powered EV-charging stations in addition to those that are hard-wired into the grid.
The company this summer will debut its new "ChargePass" payment cards and unveil its "Flex Billing" system, which allows owners of Coulomb charging stations to individually determine fees for users of their stations and ends Coulomb's previous practice of requiring electric vehicle owners to have prepaid subscriptions to use its chargers.
Coulomb, whose more than 120 EV station owners include McDonald's, Dell Corporation, Reliant Energy, DTE Energy and Element Hotels, installed its first networked charging station in San Jose, Calif., in 2008.
The company deployed more than 600 ChargePoint stations last year and plans to ship "thousands" more this year, Smith said.
Danny King, Contributor
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That's swell. Now how do I get from the charging station to my destination?
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