Write down this name: Gravity Technologies. This company is working to make electric car charging faster and more accessible in large cities. They just introduced 200 kW curbside chargers in New York that are the same size as a slow one, but 30 times faster.
Normally fast charging points are seen on highways and suburban areas, it is difficult to see them in the center of cities at street level. The idea of Gravity is that you can make better use of stops on foot at a store or a hairdresser. Because in urban areas there are many drivers who cannot depend on slow charging at night, which is what is usually proposed.
Because think about it: more than half of the world's population lives in cities (and that number is expected to increase in the coming decades). And not everyone – Spain is a good example – has a parking space and cars “sleep” on the street.
In New York there are charging points on the sidewalks, a pilot network of 100 chargers in the five boroughs of the city that has proven to be quite popular… despite the fact that they barely gain 20 miles (32 km) of autonomy in an hour. In short: they are useless for short stays.
Gravity Technologies proposes a fast charging solution it calls Distributed Energy Access Point (DEAP). Designed to be installed on metered sidewalks in the city's busiest areas, each unit mounts atop its own smart pole or a city utility pole. The DEAP box doesn't seem much larger or more intrusive than a parking meter, and Gravity says it doesn't require utility upgrades or street reconstruction. The simple, tamper-proof retractable cable is designed for easy plugging and returning.
Gravity claims that its 200 kW charging points can provide 322 km of autonomy in just 13 minutes, less time than necessary to eat or hold a business meeting. They are also bidirectional, which would allow electricity to be redirected from the parked car's battery to the grid if necessary. In essence, each plugged-in car is connected as part of the local electrical grid.
«An urban parking space is valuable real estate. So is people's time,” said Gravity founder and CEO Moshe Cohen. In addition to these new DEAP points presented, the company has a network of 24 500 kW chargers, which can add 322 km in 5 minutes and are located in a public garage in Midtown, Manhattan. For now, it has not announced plans to implement the new 200 kW curbside chargers.
