HybridMile covered a story last month highlighting Toyota’s agreement with French utility company EDF to provide all-electric vehicles to test out public charging stations in the United Kingdom. EDF and the French government are showing their commitment to alternative energies through a similar agreement with Renault. EDF and Renault will get some help from the French government through $549 million proposed by President Nicolas Sarkozy last week.
The outline of the EDF-Renault agreement remains vague at the time of this posting. Both partners will conduct testing on infrastructure, financing and regulations that will culminate in a report published in January 2010. EDF’s plan to create test stations for the Renault partnership and unveil vehicles by 2011 must be supplemented by outside partners to ensure nationwide coverage.
Most reports on the EDF-Renault plan indicate that Better Place is a likely partner in creating an infrastructure for all-electric vehicles in France. Better Place is promoting battery-exchange stations, charging stations and renewable sources of electricity in places like Israel and Denmark. The Better Place model would allow electric car drivers to recharge their batteries for short drives and switch out empty batteries for full batteries at designated spots. Better Place has expressed interest in the EDF-Renault plan in order to expand its reach on the European continent.
While the French government owns an 85% stake in EDF and a 15% stake in Renault, this commitment goes far to build off the EDF’s early success working with Toyota. Renault has a well-published alliance with Nissan Motors that shows the French automaker’s desire for an infrastructure that can be replicated outside of France. The question that comes up from the intersection of Nissan and Toyota in partnerships with EDF is how infrastructure will influence vehicle technology.
If EDF and other utilities around the world work with Better Place, automakers will have some freedom to develop proprietary drive systems as long as the batteries remain the same. The alternative view is that Toyota, GM, Renault and others will need to develop standard plug-in units to match the technical requirements of public charging stations. This homogenization of all-electric cars by major automakers would benefit all parties involved. Automakers could sell all-electric models wherever the right infrastructure existed, governments could use the EDF-Renault model to mobilize an infrastructure quickly and consumers would get zero-emission, high-efficiency vehicles for their daily commutes.
Europe will be for sure the ones leading the electric car revolution. After all they have still the highest prices on gas.
I envy Europe because they are among the first one to enjoy the pleasure of having an electric car.
Why is it that America, the supposed ”leader” in most areas, lags so far behind in electric car technology? Good job, Europe!