If you’d like to use a car in San Diego, you’ll soon have a new emission-free option. ECOtality has partnered with car2go N.A. LLC, a subsidiary of Daimler North America, to provide electric-vehicle charging infrastructure to support the first 100-percent electric-car-sharing program in North America. With plans for approximately 300 smart fortwo electric-drive vehicles, the program in San Diego will become the largest fleet of EVs in the United States.
The new car2go all-electric program will begin in San Diego late this year. ECOtality is currently installing approximately 1,000 publicly available Blink charging stations throughout the San Diego region as part of The EV Project. Data collected by the charging stations will be analyzed to better understand how EV drivers charge their car and help guide future rollouts of commercial charging stations. The project is a public-private partnership funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy through a federal stimulus grant and made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Car2go plans to provide more than 40,000 members with more than 1,000 low-emission smart fortwo vehicles in four cities.
“The launch of an all-electric-vehicle fleet marks a new era in car-sharing in North America,” says Nicholas Cole, president and CEO of car2go. “San Diego is a forward-thinking city determined to meet future transportation demands of its residents. Our goal is to complement the existing transportation infrastructure by providing an emission-free car-sharing service for short and spontaneous one-way trips.”
