A number of major stakeholders in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain have formed the Electrification Leadership Council (ELC) – a group of entities that will ‘engage federal, state, regional and local agencies and coalitions, utility companies, vehicle manufacturers and financial institutions to help overcome the barriers to broad-scale EV deployment.’
‘We have come together to create a public and private model that will help us understand what will be required to operate thousands of EVs within a community,’ says Mark Aubry, vice president of Navistar's eStar EV brand.
The ELC says it will initially work on a project that will demonstrate how a large-scale deployment of EVs will operate in a densely populated local market. This project will investigate the operation and interoperability of various EV classes and EV-charging components in the context of a functional electric grid. The ELC plans of testing charging stations, energy-storage devices, communication systems, support networks and more.
Charter members of the coalition include major fleet operators, such as FedEx Express and Hertz, as well as technology companies like ECOtality, Azure Dynamics, A123 Systems and CODA Automotive.
