Published May 23, 2012
By Philippe Crowe
Kandi Technologies, Corp. held a seminar in Beijing on May 16 that attracted top Chinese government officials and other environmental and transportation experts. The goal of the seminar was to review a nine-month long feasibility study of Kandi's innovative plan for a comprehensive Pure EV rental system.
Kandi is a Chinese manufacturer and developer of pure electric vehicles (EVs) and all-terrain vehicles. One of its product is the COCO electric vehicle (EV), an economical, all-electric super mini-car for neighborhood driving and commuting, which is also distributed in the U.S.
The company’s EV rental system end goals are to reduce traffic, parking and pollution problems in cities throughout China.
First proposed by Kandi in August, 2011, the plan envisions Hangzhou as the first test site for a new transportation system which would make available 100,000 self-driven Pure EV rentals at centrally operated “smart” vertical parking and charging facilities. These would be constructed at key locations throughout Hangzhou.
Per Kandi’s project, only Pure EVs would be made available to the public as rental cars in a rental service system connected with an automated parking system at "smart" vertical parking buildings. These building would be built at a number of key locations throughout the city including the airport, train stations, business centers, apartment complexes and other places that are the focus of commuter traffic in and around the city.
The fully integrated parking system will allow for monitoring, charging and maintenance of the EVs, parking, an energy supply and an automated mechanism for handling all related transactions. Other features of the system include vehicle locating devices to ensure easy arrivals, departures and safe parking. Of note, the charging of vehicles occurs automatically while vehicles are parked.
In addition to providing centralized management of battery charging, maintenance and rent collection, the new system will also be highly efficient with respect to utilization of land resources. For example, only 0.5 square meters of space is required in each parking facility for each vehicle or, in other words, 200 vehicles will be able to park in 100 square meters of space.
Given that a whopping total of 100,000 EVs would be potentially made available, the proposed infrastructure would thus be capable of managing this number of strategically located rental EVs in Hangzhou.
This is quite an ambitious plan.
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