SAN FRANCISCO – General Electric Chief Executive Jeff Immelt unveiled perhaps the best-looking electric vehicle charger yet invented at a big marketing shindig Tuesday morning in San Francisco. Called the WattStation, the charger was created by San Francisco designer Yves Behar and his co-workers at fuseproject, his design company.
The WattStation looks a bit like an upright tube with a stylish slant at the top, surrounded by a ring of LED lights that turn green when the vehicle is fully charged, Forbes magazine reported. The product is in keeping with Behar’s earlier efforts to make things that are both beautiful and functional: One Laptop Per Child’s $100 laptop, the New York City condom and $10 eyeglasses for poor children in Mexico.
While Behar talked about a design that would “integrate in the urban landscape,” Immelt rhapsodized about sales. He said the market for electric vehicle charging stations could reach $1.5 billion by 2013. The WattStation will sell for between $3,000 and $7,000 to commercial customers, depending on the features. Plans to launch a residential version this fall that will cost $1,000 to $1,500. The WattStations will begin shipping in the fourth quarter.
GE’s already got competition on the electric charging station front from companies like Better Place, Coulomb Technologies and AeroVironment. In June, Ford partnered with Coulomb to provide 5,000 in-home charging stations to Ford customers.
But as Immelt pointed out, GE’s strength is in commercializing things. “When you hook into GE, you hook into a salesforce with 50,000 people,” he said.
The unveiling of the WattStation came as part of GE announcing a $200 million “innovation challenge” seeking great companies and novel ideas to build up the smart grid, or as Immelt referred to it “digital energy.” GE will contribute $100 million of that amount; the remainder, said GE Chief Marketing Officer Beth Comstock, will come from five venture capital firms with which GE has partnered, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Foundation Capital. This activity falls under GE’s Ecomagination initiative, the company’s effort to develop and deploy clean energy technology.
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