City of Houston Installs Coulomb Technologies Networked Charging Stations for Electric Vehicles

But First Snide's Remarks: As our loyal readers know, The Auto Channel has put its support for Electric Vehiclse where your eyes are, since before it was cool to be a EV'er.

BUT let's not get blinded by the light and miss another real good alternative to gasoline, and maybe a better way to get us away from the black poison, build every car as a Flex-Fuel vehicle (cost to manufacturer only $50 bucks) and then retrofitting 200 million gasoline powered cars on the road to burn Ethanol...make sure you understand that the raw material for American alcohol can be produced in every farm county on America by American farmers who will be growing non food crops on non food crop land...it's sure worth looking at.

I hate to sound Snide, but if home grown ethanol was the accepted alternative fuel, the power companies would have to settle for lower volumes and lower profits. EV's are the best thing since the light bulb for "Big Power". Let me know what you think...msnide@theautochannel.com

HOUSTON--Coulomb Technologies, the leader in electric vehicle charging station infrastructure, today announced the first networked charging stations for plug-in electric vehicles are available for use in the city of Houston, Texas. The ten charging stations available for consumer and City fleet use are part of a public demonstration project, dubbed the “Power of the Plug-In”, and funded by Reliant Energy one of the largest retail electric providers in Texas. The ten Reliant-provided charging stations will be located around Houston, with public stations at City Hall, the Health Department office at 8000 Stadium Drive and at the Mayor’s Citizens Assistance Office at 9615 Rustic Wood, Kingwood. The official unveiling of the charging stations takes place on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 1:00 p.m. Central at Houston City Hall, 901 Bagby Street in downtown Houston. Coulomb’s South Central U.S. distributor, Verdek Corporation, provided sales and support for the ChargePoint® Networked Charging Stations installation.

“Coulomb’s charging stations in Houston demonstrate that the City will be EV ready,” said Richard Lowenthal, CEO of Coulomb Technologies. “With more than 3800 light duty, non-specialty vehicles the city fleet and thousands of electric cars on the roads in the coming years, the installation of these charging stations signals a new way of fueling up in the lone star state. Houston is sending an important message to its residents that alternative fuels are on their way, and the infrastructure to power these vehicles is available.”

Coulomb Technologies charging stations are used in municipalities, utilities, green office buildings and parking garages to allow consumers to charge their electric vehicles wherever they live, work and shop. The network of electric vehicle charging stations, called the ChargePoint® Network, is accessible to all plug-in drivers by making a toll free call to the 24/7 number on each charging station, or drivers can subscribe to the ChargePoint Network and receive a ChargePoint Smart Card that allows them to charge their car at any charging station worldwide. The ChargePoint Network enabled charging stations provide:

Notification by SMS text or email when charging is complete
The ability for drivers to find unoccupied charging stations via web-enabled cell phones
Authenticated access to eliminate energy theft
Authorized energizing for safety
Remote monitoring and diagnostics for superior quality of service
Smart Grid integration for utility load management with future V2G capabilities

To locate available charging stations, visit http://www.mychargepoint.net and click “Find Stations.”

About VERDEK-EV

VERDEK-EV promotes EVs, NEVs and Charging Station Infrastructure to support the growth of an alternative and sustainable transportation system in North America. We encourage consumers, distributors and investors to visit our web site at www.VERDEK-EV.com. VERDEK-EV can also be viewed on Facebook.

About Coulomb Technologies, Inc.

Coulomb Technologies is the leader in electric vehicle charging station infrastructure with networked charging stations installed in municipalities and organizations worldwide. Coulomb provides a vehicle-charging infrastructure, which includes an open system driver network: the ChargePoint Network provides multiple web-based portals for Hosts, Fleet managers, Subscribers, and Utilities http://www.mychargepoint.net, and ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations ranging in capability from 120V 16A to 240V 80A AC charging to future 120kW DC charging, and all US charging stations are SAE J1772™ compliant. For more information, please visit http://www.coulombtech.com and follow Coulomb on Twitter at http://twitter.com/coulombevi.