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Electric car charging stations
Heading into Boston today, I parked at the Alewife MBTA parking garage on Route 2 and caught the red line the rest of the way. Along the outside perimeter of the second floor of the garage, the above sign and many others identical to it lined the walls. Also attached to the wall alongside each parking space was a box with some insulated wires jutting out. Most of these boxes were covered with plastic but a few were exposed so I snapped the photo below. It looks to me like the MBTA is getting ready to provide “electric car charging stations” for commuters. Drive your electric car to the garage, plug it in and while you take the T to work and spend the day in the city, your car’s battery is restoring itself for your afternoon commute home. It’s a pretty neat concept, one that I’d heard of before but had no idea it was this close to implementation.
The electric charging stations are certainly being worked on – these are a little more sophisticated than the standard plug-in.
http://www.geindustrial.com/products/static/WattStation/
And they are being put in place, although it is an expensive proposition – nice to have some ARRA funds to help foot the bill.
http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/general/2010/101005CaruthersEVcharge.html
The electric car projects are just a scam to get a certain group of VC’s to control the lithium fields in Afghanistan! He who controls the electric cars controls the trillions of dollars of lithium revenues. It is just like oil all over again.
Dmitry Medvedev Came to Silicon Valley on June 22, 2010 and met with some of the venture capital companies that helped lobby the leverage for the electric car companies that just got funded. Only the car companies got funded that would play in this scheme.
Ener1 Battery Systems who got zillions of the dollars from DOE per the Loan Guarantee and ATVM Director Seward.
Is controlled in part by Russian “business man” Boris Zingarevich.
Who is best friends with the Russian Dmitry Medvedev, who arranged for all of Russia to extend current agreements signed with foreign automakers between 2005 and 2008 granting preferential duties on imported components for eight years in return for sourcing 30 percent of parts locally, according to the Industry and Trade Ministry. Once those arrangements expire, the carmakers would need to commit to buying 60 percent of components in Russia within six years to get more tax breaks.
Dmitry also appears to own interest in lots of Lithium processing and mining company technology in Russia which is pretty close to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is: the “Saudi Arabia’ of lithium”. American geologists have discovered huge mineral deposits (Many $1 trillion of dollars worth) throughout Afghanistan, according to the New York Times. Lithium, gold, cobalt, copper, iron, among other valuable minerals are lying beneath what is already a war-torn country with little history with mining. Off and on over the decades, geologists—Soviet, Afghan, American—would investigate and chart some of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, only to put the work on hold as violent conflict erupted. Now, corruption, in-fighting between the central and district governments, foreign interests, and greater zeal from the Taliban might come into play to disrupt a potential economy evolving around these natural resources. With the Ministry of Mines, a Pentagon task force is now helping organize a way of handling the mineral development and bidding rights. How this unfolds socially, environmentally and politically should be interesting.
The New York Times reports: The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion. The two most prevalent minerals are copper and iron. Niobium, used for making superconducting steel, has also been found.
The effort to get that money for Ener1 was strong armed by Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar, one of the deans of Congress, and his junior colleague, Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh.
Richard Lugar and Lachlan Seward co-managed the Chrysler Bail-out.
Lachlan Seward was appointed by George Bush to run all of the tens of billions for the DOE ATVM and Loan Guarantee Programs. He & Matt Rogers gave most of the money away to their closely aligned interests and negated competing applicants. —
Another place near Afghanistan that there is lot’s of Lithium is in Mongolia. Blum Capital has targeted the Lithium fields in Mongolia, said to be the second largest fields after Afghanistan in the region. Mongolia touches Russia so mining and equipment access could first take place there via Russia. China wants the Mongolian Lithium too so there is some two-way bidding that each country (Russia and China) do not know about. The owner of Blum Capital is Senator Feinsteins husband. She recently made him the Goodwill Ambassador to Mongolia.
Blum’s wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein, has received scrutiny due to her husband’s government contracts and extensive business dealings with China and her past votes on trade issues with the country. Blum has denied any wrongdoing, however. Critics have argued that business contracts with the US government awarded to a company (Perini) controlled by Blum may raise a potential conflict-of-interest issue with the voting and policy activities of his wife. URS Corp, which Blum had a substantial stake in, bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the U.S. military, from The Carlyle Group in 2002; EG&G subsequently won a $600m defense contract. In 2009 it was reported that Blum’s wife Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to provide $25 billion in taxpayer money to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, a government agency that had recently awarded her husband’s real estate firm, CB Richard Ellis, what the Washington Times called “a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.
Pan American Lithium Corp is led by Andrew Brodkey, CEO, President and Director – who has 25 years in the mining industry as a mining engineer, lawyer and senior executive with a focus on corporate legal and business development activities at major mining companies with an emphasis on Latin America, including Magma Copper Company and BHP Copper Inc. Mr. Brodkey also created the International Mining & Metals Group of CB Richard Ellis, Inc (“CBRE”). He and Mr. Blum work together on Lithium deals
” In 2009 the University of California Board of Regents, of which Blum is a member, voted to increase student registration fees (roughly the Univ. of California equivalent of tuition) by 32%. Shortly thereafter, Blum Capital Partners purchased additional stock in ITT Tech, a for-profit educational institution. These events suggest a conflict of interest on Blum’s part. Also see: http://la.indymedia.org/news/2010/09/242044.php and http://www.floppingaces.net/2007/04/02/the-silence-on-the-feinstein-c/ and http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/21/senate-husbands-firm-cashes-in-on-crisis/
Those stations have been there for years and in plastic bags. I always assumed they were a failed concept.
I park at Alewife frequently and have never noticed these, maybe because yesterday I was on the second floor while on prior visits I’ve had to park higher up. I did notice the plastic bag coverings, but since it was windy, some had blown away. It’s great to hear that the MBTA was so far ahead of everyone else in preparing for this technology.
My concern is where is the power going to come from? Coal? A Billerica power plant?
Brian – I share those concerns as well. At face value, it would seem that it is far more efficient to generate power where it is needed (in the engine) than remotely and use it to charge a battery that then runs the motor. My current understanding is that even with coal, the efficiencies of electric cars are far higher and the ability to pollute away from urban centers where cars are idling is an environmental win.
Charging stations have been placed in Alewife station for decades. They were a boondoggle a decade ago, and never used. I predict that the same thing will happen again. I’d love to see some real research to see when they were FIRST put in Alewife and some real statistics on how much use they actually got.