The Petaluma, California, City Council this week unanimously moved to ban new gas stations, and existing stations won’t be allowed to add new gas pumps – but they can add electric chargers. The council must approve the ban during a second reading in order to make it official.

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Great Britain is arguably better known as a bleak little island on the edge of Europe, rather than as a renewable powerhouse, but ‘the times they are a-changin’. It won’t be surprising that Britain with its considerable coastline is ‘blowing in the wind’, but what is less well known is that occasionally there is sunshine too. GRIDSERVE has made its name in recent years by building out solar farms across the UK. As such, the team there, led by CEO Toddington Harper, has approached the electric vehicle charging challenge from the perspective of primarily serving the grid and electric car drivers, and free from any fossil fuel legacy, not its shareholders. And it shows.

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Drivers of gas cars are expressing fears about contact with coronavirus at the pumps. Studies dating back to 2011 reveal that gas pumps are among the germiest surfaces in America.

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Curse Electrify America (EA) if you want. Giovanni Palazzo, the CEO of the nationwide charging network, invites criticism if you have a terrible experience at an EA location. We spent a full hour last week with Palazzo, and COO Brendan Jones, discussing the challenges of creating an open nationwide network of ultra-fast EV chargers. Electrify America has made a lot of progress, but its leaders admit it has a long way to go to serve the next generation of EV drivers.

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If you needed another sign of electric vehicles taking over, a gas station in Maryland is removing its gas pumps to make space for new electric car-charging stations. expand full story

Florida’s Turnpike plazas will be getting fast charging stations, as the state recently introduced its mitigation plan from its share of the Volkswagen Dieselgate settlement.

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Home charging stations for electric cars can often look quite dull, which is not a problem for most people since it just becomes another tool in your garage or driveway, but that’s not OK for Bentley.

The British luxury automaker designed a stunning new charging station for its upcoming electric vehicles. expand full story

Large countries with low population density are having more difficulties deploying electric car charging networks for long distance travel.

Australia is a great example, but they are trying to get ahead of the issue as the country announced today a new ‘Electric Super Highway’ to cover over 1,000 miles with fast-charging stations for electric cars by the end of the year. expand full story

Good news for Canadian electric car drivers or soon-to-be electric car drivers. A new network of DC fast-charging stations has been announced to cover the Trans-Canada Highway in a currently underserved region between Ontario and Manitoba.

Interestingly, the stations will be equipped with energy storage systems in order to make sure it can deliver fast-charging even where there are grid limitations. expand full story

Good news for current and soon-to-be German electric car drivers. German electric utility EnBW announced that they will deploy 1,000 new EV charging stations along the German Autobahn.

EnBW already has a small network of charging station in Germany, but those new chargers alone would more than double the size of the network. expand full story

The world of electric vehicle charging infrastructure is still only in its infancy, but it’s growing at an exciting pace. After 5 major automakers announced that they joined forces to deploy 400 ultra-fast (350 kW) charging stations for electric vehicles in Europe last month, now the latest good news comes from EVgo, a leading operator of public EV charging networks in the US.

Today, the company announced that it has broken ground on the very first US public charging station capable of “up 350 kW” output. The station is located in Baker, California.  expand full story

Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the biggest utility company in California, recently submitted a proposal to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to install approximately 7,500 level 2, and 100 DC fast EV charging stations around the state, which would be, by far, the most massive roll-out of chargers in the United States.

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While everyone had their eyes glued to the Model 3 at the unveiling event last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made an important announcement regarding the automaker’s two networks of charging stations. He said that Tesla will double the number of Superchargers to 7,000 units and quadruple the number of Destination chargers to 15,000 units within the next 2 years.

If the close to 400,000 Model 3 reservations (and still counting) end up turning into orders, Tesla will certainly need all those stations to allow its customers to make roadtrips and travel long-distances. We now learn that the company is already getting to work. Tesla secured permits or started construction at 11 new locations (~90 new Superchargers) since the unveiling event. expand full story

Tesla will soon have more charging stations in Manhattan than there are gas stations in the city according to a report from the NYPost:

Looking to make driving less of a pain for the 1,500 owners of its electric cars in the Big Apple, Tesla motors plans to greatly expand its network of Manhattan charging stations to 105 by March 31, The Post has learned. Each will be able to provide a full charge in as little as four hours — and most will be free to Tesla owners. The expansion, green-lighted by Tesla founder Elon Musk, means there could soon be three times as many electric-car charging stations in Manhattan as gas stations.

It wasn’t specified in the report which was *verified* by Tesla PR, but those charging stations will all be 40-80A destination chargers which can charge a Tesla with up to 58 miles per hour of charge. The nearest Supercharger is still at JFK airport as far as we can tell so the Post’s opening line:

Charging a Tesla in Manhattan will soon be easier than gassing up the family sedan.

…is kind of BS…

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Jordan, a small Middle Eastern country of about 8 million people, is popular in the media these days for its role in the Syrian refugee crisis. The country is providing asylum to about 1 million refugees according to the UN Refugee Agency. Some, including Britain’s Prince Charles, see climate change as the root cause of the civil war in Syria, which sparked the refugee crisis.

An extreme drought believed to have been caused by climate change forced as many as 1.5 million people between 2006 and 2009 to migrate away from lands and into the cities. The sudden urbanization caused social stresses which eventually led to the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Arguably, Jordan is doing more than its part by offering asylum to so many refugees, but the country is also addressing the root cause by accelerating its plans to curb emissions. The government recently announced a tax and custom duties exemption for electric vehicles and charging equipment. Tesla is one of the first company to take advantage of the new policy. expand full story

The CHAdeMO fast-charging standard increases in popularity with Nissan championing the program by recently installing over 1,600 CHAdeMO charging stations at their dealerships in Japan, bringing the worldwide total to over 8,550. expand full story