San Francisco, San Jose as well as Palo Alto, California were all too happy to endorse Better Place’s electric vehicle infrastructure dual years ago, though now a powers which be have invested some money to get this uncover upon a highway. The Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission has forsaken $6.9 million to squeeze as well as build 61 electric taxis and 4 robotic battery swap stations to put creatively juiced cells in place — only similar to Better Place has been you do with Tokyo taxis given April 26th. Yellow Cab Cooperative and Yellow Checker Cab will work a zero-emission vehicles, though CNET reports that they’ve nonetheless to choose the sold sort — maybe we’ll eventually see Mitsubishi’s we MiEV with a steering circle upon a left-hand side? PR after the mangle. Show full PR textMTC Awards $33 Million in New Grants to Spur Innovations in Emissions Reduction

17 Bay Area Projects Selected

OAKLAND, Calif., Oct. 27, 2010 – The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) today approved 17 grants totaling $33 million by the Climate Initiatives Program to promote new thing techniques for shortening greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle-miles trafficked around the Bay Area. The commitments embody 13 Innovative Grants totaling $31 million to support electric-vehicle fleets, encourage alternatives to piece for one person pushing, hospital energetic pricing for parking, promote bicycle sharing, concede ocean-going ships to turn off their diesel motor fuel engines whilst loading or unloading cargo, discharge a need to ride hot pavement for cement rehabilitation projects, and ascent signalized intersections to acknowledge as well as count bicycles. The Commission additionally authorized four Safe Routes to Schools grants totaling $2 million for programs written to inspire walking or bicycling to propagandize. These grants will addition $15 million already distributed to a 9 Bay Area counties for internal Safe Routes to Schools programs.

“The stiff foe for these grants shows the spirit of creation is alive and well in a Bay Area,” pronounced MTC Chair as well as Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, noting the Commission received 75 primary plan requests totaling $250 million during the begin of the two-step evaluation process. “But a suggestion of partnership as well as collaboration between a field is similarly clever. We ultimately comparison the projects which have the greatest intensity for shortening hothouse gas emissions as well as that can be replicated regionwide. And because most of a strange plan sponsors finished up fasten forces with alternative applicants, good proposals got even better.”

The greatest of the 13 Innovative Grants is the scarcely $7 million endowment to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, a city of San Jose as well as Palo Alto-based Better Place to demonstrate electric taxis in San Jose as well as San Francisco. Other grants for electric car programs enclosed $2.8 million for the inhabitant demonstration project led by Alameda County that includes the squeeze of 90 electric vehicles as well as concomitant Level 2 chargers for make use of by public agencies in Alameda, Marin, Santa Clara and Sonoma counties; as well as $1.7 million for the group led by a San Francisco County Transportation Authority to muster 19 electric vehicles in the City CarShare fleet in San Francisco as well as a East Bay.

A partnership involving a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, SamTrans, the San Francisco MTA and a Bay Area Air Quality Management District received roughly $4.3 million for the pilot bike-sharing program through that 1,000 bikes will be available for make use of at 100 kiosks in San Francisco, San Jose, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City and alternative cities along a Caltrain corridor.

The Port of Oakland won the $3 million accede to to implement the infrastructure needed to allow ships during one of its 18 general berths to turn off their auxiliary diesel engines and block into a electrical grid while loading or unloading load. This Shore Power beginning is programmed as the initial step in the eventual transformation of all the port’s international berths as well as the 8 sea terminals.

The city of Napa teamed with Sonoma County to win the $2 million accede to to demonstrate cold-in-place asphalt recycling, which eliminates the need to furnish brand-new paving material or ride it to a worksite. The proof will embody roadway rehab projects in both Napa as well as Sonoma counties.

The city of San Jose perceived $1.5 million to test 8 different bicycle showing as well as equate systems during signalized intersections around a city. Each exam will final during slightest 3 months. The city will control overdo to bicyclists to brand the best record, as well as afterwards exercise a complement upon dual vital travel corridors with existent bike lanes.

The city of Berkeley perceived the $2 million grant to implement the commander module for energetic pricing of parking spaces in the Southside as well as Elmwood districts, to raise parking coercion to manage spillover into neighboring residential neighborhoods, as well as to exercise assorted transportation demand-management (TDM) strategies to assistance reduce a series of auto trips in the city.

SamTrans got scarcely $1.5 million to implement car-sharing, short-distance vanpools as well as alternative TDMs in and around downtown Redwood City. The San Francisco County Transportation Authority perceived $750,000 to settle the forum for implementing TDM collection such as parking cashout programs as well as the Muni Partners convey. A partnership in between a Sonoma County Transportation Authority as well as a city of Santa Rosa got $600,000 to restructure Santa Rosa’s Guaranteed Ride Home program, its invert pass and youth pass programs as well as alternative TDM strategies. Another partnership led by the Sonoma County Transportation Authority received the $1.5 million grant to denote dynamic ridesharing technology in Sonoma, Marin and Contra Costa counties.

The four Safe Routes to Schools grants approved by MTC enclosed $867,000 to a partnership spearheaded by a Alameda County Waste Management Authority for a climate change curriculum as well as foe in schools in Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara as well as Sonoma counties; $500,000 to the group led by a Alameda County Transportation Commission for the mobile lorry that workers will use to foster walking as well as biking, as well as to provide bicycle repairs and bike repair as well as bike reserve lessons; $383,000 for a organisation led by a Transportation Authority of Marin that will use social media to foster “Green Ways to School;” and $250,000 for the Solano Transportation Authority to develop geographic report systems (GIS)-based route-to-school maps with safety coded routes.

MTC is the travel planning, coordinating as well as financing group for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. A complete list of projects authorized for funding through a Climate Initiatives Program grants can be noticed here (PDF).

Better Place to Bring Electric Taxi Program to a San Francisco Bay Area

October 27, 2010

Palo Alto, Calif. – (October 27, 2010) – Better Place, with support from the U.S. Department of Transportation around a Metropolitan Transportation Commission, today announced a joining to bring the switchable battery, electric cab program to a Bay Area in partnership with a cities of San Francisco as well as San Jose to serve cement the region’s place as a “EV Capital of a U.S.”

Taxis have been the high-mileage, high-visibility shred which can serve as a on-ramp for record send to a mass-market. Over a subsequent three years, the module will muster as well as work 4 battery switch stations in a San Francisco to San Jose mezzanine which supports the fleet of zero-emission, switchable taxis. This swift will suggest many thousands of Bay Area residents and visitors their initial EV experience. The module also has a intensity to help California and a Bay Area encounter their assertive energy and meridian process goals when scaled to the complete region.

Electric taxis are a gateway to purify cities. While gas-powered taxis are fewer in number than personal cars, these high-mileage vehicles have been disproportionally responsible for harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) as well as alternative tailpipe emissions, so foundation of this swift is essential to making a genuine stroke on air peculiarity as well as oil expenditure. Since taxis drive scarcely continuously, they need present charge of their battery to say peculiarity of service as well as goon portion the open. Given a taxi commercial operation, watchful 3 to 4 hours for standard assign is not an choice. Battery switch is a usually option which allows a driver to recharge in reduction time than it takes to refuel, the equates to of operation prolongation for today’s gas-powered taxis.

Better Place has been successfully operating an EV taxi program in Tokyo, upheld by the Japanese government. The commander plan began on April 26, in team-work with Nihon Kotsu Co., Tokyo’s largest taxi user, as well as focuses on a feasibility of an automated battery switch routine as equates to for taxis to have instant, zero-emission, range extension. In a initial 90 days of a trial, a EV taxis gathering over 25,000 miles regulating battery switch as the first equates to of “present assign” or operation prolongation.

“Today marks a poignant miracle in our impetus towards accelerating a mass acceptance of electric cars in a Bay Area. This program will capacitate us to reach the extended audience and demonstrate the solution that offers drivers a some-more convenient choice than today’s gasoline cars,” said Jason Wolf, VP of North America for Better Place. “The battery switch model is gaining movement globally. Our Tokyo EV cab program has proven to be an e.g. to major metropolitan areas around the universe, and you have been pleased that a MTC famous this and the Bay Area is receiving a leadership place in a U.S.”

This module will be grown in partnership with key regional stakeholders and organizations which are working together to setup Bay Area EV leadership, together with:

• Taxi operators as well as automobile sharing programs: Yellow Cab Cooperative, Yellow Checker Cab Inc.; • Regional as well as state agencies: Bay Area Air Quality Management District • Consumer and EV organizations: Plug-in America, AAA Northern California; • Leading informal business/community organizations: Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Bay Area Council, Bay Area Climate Collaborative, Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, and others; • San Francisco Public Utilities Commission

“In November 2008, I was assimilated by Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed as well as Better Place in job for making a San Francisco Bay Area the EV Capital of America,” pronounced San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. “This partnership with Better Place to setup the initial electric cab module with switchable battery EVs in a U.S. helps have this the reality.”

Better Place stays on-track in building as well as deploying countrywide networks of charging and battery-switching infrastructure in its first dual markets, Israel as well as Denmark, for blurb launch in late 2011. Better Place will begin its initial network deployment in Canberra, Australia in late 2011 as partial of the nationwide infrastructure hurl out.

Via Engadget