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from convenient. “You’re really dreading that, because
it’s like, ‘I’ve got to get towed, but they’re just going tow
me to the nearest charging station. That’s most likely
a Level 2 charging station, and I’m going to have to sit
there and wait to charge my car before I can continue
my jou r ney.’”
Using SparkCharge’s portable charging unit, a ser-
vice provider can charge an EV at a rate of one mile
per minute of charging. “So they can be there for 10 or
20 minutes, they can charge your electric vehicle very
fast, and then you can go about your day and either
make it back home or make it to the destination where
you were originally planning to go,” Aviv explains.
“So, you provide a better service, a better experi-
ence for an electric vehicle owner when they run out
of charge. The service also saves money by not having
to send a big tow truck out there. They can send vans
or even cars. These chargers are modular and portable,
so it completely changes the dynamic of what a tow
service is to an EV owner.”
Each battery module can deliver somewhere between
14 or 15 miles of range per module, depending on the
vehicle. “Most companies that we’re beginning to roll
these services out with are doing somewhere between
three to four modules for each deployment,” says Aviv.
“So they’re deploying somewhere between 30 to 50
miles [worth of charging] on each truck in their fleet.”Charge anytime, anywhere
Aviv believes that there are numerous other situations
in which anytime/anyplace charging could be neces-
sary, or at least convenient. “An EV owner can be any-
where. It could be outside of Starbucks, or while they
are grocery shopping. They take their phone out, and at
the push of a button, a service comes and charges their
car on the spot. It doesn’t have to be planned. It doesn’t
have to be an emergency. This is essentially on-demand
convenience charging where the EV owner gets range
delivered wherever they want it.”
The service could also work with personal assistants
such as Amazon, Alexa, and Google Home. “An EV
owner is sitting on the couch, and they can say, ‘Okay,
Google. Bring me 100 miles of range.’ Any service
that’s hooked up to that command is going to bring
them range right away.”
One of the thorniest problems in the infrastructure
world today is the challenge of providing charging for
apartment residents and others who don’t have the
option of installing chargers at their homes. For some,
SparkCharge could be a solution. “You can simply
have [charging] delivered to an apartment complex
while sitting on the couch,” says Aviv. “You can order a
charge for your car the same way that you would order
a pizza to your front door.”
“There’s also a service that we call concierge charg-
ing,” says Aviv. “Let’s say we’re driving from LA to San
Francisco. Instead of [charging at a highway rest stop]
I can have a service meet me along my journey. I don’t
have to worry about finding my next charging station,If you’re a towing
company, you no longer
have to worry about
towing an electric vehicle,
which means you can now
make more money and
provide a better service
for that EV owner.