GM, China State Grid talking on EV charging stations

Shanghai, November 6 (Gasgoo.com) A senior GM official said the company has been holding talks with the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) to build a large number of electric vehicle charging stations in the country, official Jinghua newspaper reported today.

"We are holding preliminary talks about a possible cooperation but have not reached any agreements at this time,” said Raymond Bierzynski, Vice President President of General Motors Asia Pacific yesterday at a presenting event of its Chevrolet Volt electric car in Shanghai.

GM is planning to bring Chevrolet Volt to China for volume production by 2011 to meet the Chinese market demand. The vehicle is designed to run purely on electricity from on-board lithium Ion batteries for up to 40 miles (64 km). But with the use of a small internal combustion engine driving a generator to resupply the batteries, the vehicle's range can be extended to as much as 640 miles (1,030 km) on a single tank of fuel, according to the automaker.

In mid-September, the SGCC, the largest electric power transmission and distribution company in the world, instructed its subsidiaries to speed up construction of electric car charging stations in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and other large cities in the country.

After the power charging stations for electric cars are built in several big cities as a pilot project, these stations will serve the electric buses and electric sedans in a trial run. The nationwide coverage of the charging station network will be launched as soon as possible if the pilot project operates well enough and gets approved by the nation's top economic regulator, said a sales executive with the State Grid.

The company has set up a charging station network around venues of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and will build more in Shanghai for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo to serve electric vehicles and future networks.

Chevrolet Volt to go on sale in China by 2011