U.S. offers electric car charging help to Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt owners
BY SANDRA GUY Business Reporter sguy@suntimes.com August 1, 2012 10:54AM
Updated: August 1, 2012 1:48PM
Chicago’s already juiced-up access to electric-vehicle charging stations is getting a new spark: Local owners of Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt cars who agree to share their charging data may get a free wall-mount charger and a $400 installation credit as part of a government program aimed at building a nationwide network of electric-vehicle charging stations.
Individual and commercial Leaf and Volt owners may sign up for the program at http://www.theevproject.com/sign-up.php or by emailing chicago@ecotality.com. They may also learn more at a forum at 10 a.m. Aug. 20 at the InterContinental hotel at 505 N. Michigan Ave.
The project is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and managed by ECOtality, Inc., a clean-transportation and storage technology company based in San Francisco.
The Chicago area is already slated to have at least 600 charging stations soon in accessible sites such as parking garages, tollway oases and retail-store parking lots, as Chicago-based Carbon Day and 350Green of Los Angeles continue their previously announced plans to install them. Most of the charging stations in the Midwest are made by Coulomb Technologies of Campbell, Calif., and operate on the Chargepoint Network.
