Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 12:20pm PDT | Modified: July 27, 2010, 12:20 PM

ECOtality unveils electric car chargers

by Christina Williams
Sustainable Business Oregon

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Blink commercial charger

ECOtality took the wraps off its models for home and commercial car chargers Tuesday, introducing a product line it dubbed "Blink."

Created in partnership with iconic industrial design firm frog design, the Blink chargers — which come in both home and commercial versions — feature color touch screens, a sleek silhouette, and a black and silver color scheme.

The chargers will be sprouting up across Oregon later this year as part of the U.S. Department of Energy-funded EV Project, which is being overseen in Oregon by ECOtality's ECOtality North America division. In total, ECOtality will install 15,000 stations in 16 cities across six U.S. states — about 1,000 of them will be in Oregon.

Blink home charger

Jeanine L'Ecuyer, ECOtality vice president of communications and marketing, said the engineering of the charger was done within the San Francisco-based company in partnership with frog design. ECOtality's manufacturing partner is Roush of Livonia, Mi.

The Blink chargers deliver a full charge in two to six hours, can be programmed to charge the car when electricity rates are the lowest, and will link to participating utilities and be controlled remotely through smart phone and Web applications.

Because of its networking technology, the chargers leave the door open for applications that will allow hosts to charge for the electricity used by electric vehicle owners.

ECOTality follows other car charger models that have been unveiled recently including home chargers from Couloumb and GE's groovy WattStation, both announced earlier this month.

Pike Research estimates that electric vehicle chargers will constitute a $1.5 billion market by 2015.