EV road map: Follow the sun

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Are solar panels the peanut butter to electric cars’ chocolate?
A prime critique of electric cars is that they have serious range issues thanks to battery limitations, slow charging times and a lack of electric infrastructure. Another is that they’re not truly carbon-free since most electricity in the country comes from fossil-fuel power plants.

SolarCity, a Foster City, Calif., designer and installer of solar panels, thinks it may have licked both of those problems at once.

The company said today that it has put up a ‘corridor’ of high-watt/high-amp electric charging stations on the route of the 101 Freeway. That will allow electric vehicle drivers to make the trek from Los Angeles to San Francisco without ‘range anxiety’ -- a condition that loosely translates as fear of having to stop overnight at the Motel 6 every time the battery runs dry.

The money shot is that one of the stations will be solar-powered, generating all of its electricity from the sun and wiping the EV’s carbon footprint from the face of the Earth. And filling up the tank will be free of charge.

There is a catch, of course: For now the chargers will work only with the Tesla Roadster, a $109,000 sports coupe that only a few hundred people in the world own. By no coincidence, the chief executive of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, just happens to the chairman of SolarCity. (The company plans to eventually retrofit the stations to be able to charge other EVs.)

The stations, with their 240-volt, 70-amp chargers, will be located at branches of Dutch banking giant Rabobank (which is assisting the project) in Salinas, Atascadero, Goleta and Santa Maria, where the 30-kilowatt solar panel has already been installed. Rabobank, which will also power its branch using the panel, is considering adding additional solar cells at the other locations in the future. (There’s another public Tesla station in San Luis Obispo, but not at a Rabobank.)

As of now, the corridor will essentially be a test laboratory to determine whether a photovoltaic option will solve the great infrastructure riddle facing adoption of electric cars. In this vision of the future, EVs will be charged -- at home and on the road -- by sunlight. Unlimited range. Guilt-free.

‘We’re combining clean, renewable solar power with all-electric transportation, allowing drivers to travel through California with zero emissions,” said Lyndon Rive, chief executive of SolarCity, in a statement.

SolarCity is clearly banking on the growth of electric cars for its own success. Last week the company acquired SolSource Energy, which specializes in photovoltaic vehicle-charging equipment, from Carson-based Clean Fuel Connection. And on its own, SolarCity has already installed upward of 100 home-based solar charging stations for Tesla owners.

Running a project like this is a good way to get the word out, but it isn’t cheap. That’s where the taxpayer comes in: California’s Air Resources Board is picking up the bill for the charging equipment, figuring that the project ‘moves us one step closer to solving the nationwide challenge of clean, reliable motor vehicle transportation,’ according to Craig Childers, an engineer at the air board.

The promise of this combination of technology is certainly appealing, but clearly there are still kinks to be worked out.

Not the least of which is: What the heck is there to do in Santa Maria? Located about 170 miles from Los Angeles, it’s close enough for a Tesla to make it on one charge. Yet even with a fast charger, the Tesla will still take 3.5 hours to fully fuel up for the next leg.

Pray there’s a movie theater nearby.
-- Ken Bensinger

A Tesla Roadster receives a charge. Credit: Frank Augstein / Associated Press