Edison to Join GM in Electric Vehicle Service
In a development touted as a spur to the creation of an electric-vehicle infrastructure, Southern California Edison Co. today will announce a partnership with General Motors Corp. to market, install and service charging stations for GM’s new electric car in California.
The agreement, which puts GM in the driver’s seat for setting the standard among competing charging technologies, establishes a new unregulated Edison subsidiary that will sell or lease GM’s Magne Charge inductive charging system to buyers of the EV1, which goes on sale this fall at Saturn dealerships.
The charger’s price has not yet been set, but observers estimate it will be between $500 and $1,000. The car is expected to be priced in the mid-$30,000 range. GM has not announced its sales goals.
“Over the next three years, we hope to see 8,000 to 10,000 charging systems in Southern California and San Diego,” both public and private, said Diane Wittenberg, president of Edison EV.
But because GM’s inductive charging system, which uses magnetic waves to power up vehicles, is incompatible with other electric vehicles--notably those to be built later by Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp.--competitors see the partnership as a preemptive strike by GM to set the standard for such systems with its proprietary technology.
“It’s just like VHS and Beta, and we think GM has chosen Beta,” said Howard Hampton, a spokesman for Ford’s Electric Vehicle Programs in Dearborn, Mich. “We think it’s a mistake. GM has a vested economic interest in inductive charging becoming the norm.”
But proponents of electric vehicles hailed the partnership as a major step forward in developing the regional market for nonpolluting vehicles by overcoming one of the main obstacles: where to plug the things in.
“It clearly is continued momentum in the . . . launching of electric vehicles,” said Mike Gage, president of Calstart, a consortium of companies that is trying to develop an advanced-vehicle industry in California. Edison and the GM subsidiaries that helped develop the EV1 and its charging system are members of Calstart.
Both Ford and Chrysler have settled on a conductive charging system for their electric vehicles that makes use of a plug and socket that transmits power through metal-to-metal contact, much like a conventional appliance.
But others say there’s plenty of room for all technologies to battle it out in the marketplace.
“This fills a . . . gap in the service structure to serve these cars,” said Veronica Kun, a senior scientist in the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Los Angeles office. “Edison’s decision to step up to the plate and fill that gap is an important element in moving forward with this advanced, nonpolluting technology.”
The subsidiary, Edison EV, will become the California distributor of the inductive charging system, a high-voltage system that will recharge electric vehicles in as little as three hours. With a conventional wall socket, it can take as long as 15 hours.
The system will be manufactured by GM’s Delco Electronics Corp. subsidiary.
Edison will also install and service the units and help customers hook up with their local utilities.
Consumer costs have not been determined, but the goal is to approximate the consumer’s monthly costs for gasoline.
The charging station--a free-standing or wall-mounted box with a plastic paddle that fits in a slot in the EV1’s front end--will be sold or leased to fleet customers, public agencies and companies that want to set them up for their employees, and to private customers who want to install them in their garages.
Edison Chairman John E. Bryson is expected to announce the partnership today at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.
Earlier this month, GM announced plans to begin producing the EV1 this fall and sell it in Los Angeles and three other Western cities, becoming the first major auto maker to mass-produce electric passenger vehicles in modern times.
