The Monrovia-based company, best known for manufacturing unmanned aircraft, is in the final stages of designing electric vehicle charging stations for residential and commercial use. It’s already pitching them to companies, government agencies, policymakers and automakers, hoping for a big piece of a market that’s now tiny but has huge growth potential. About $320 billion is expected to be spent on equipment and infrastructure for electric vehicle charging over the next couple of decades.
The company has long had experience with electric vehicles, starting more than 20 years ago when it began working on General Motors Corp. prototypes that led to the EV1 electric car. Now, AeroVironment executives say the timing is finally right to go beyond development and into manufacturing a profitable recharging product.

“People want electric vehicles because they are tired of high gas prices, dependence on foreign oil, and they are worried about climate change and the environment. And the technology is better,” said Kristen Helsel, director of the electric vehicles program at AeroVironment. “We see enough support – from consumers to automakers and policymakers – that this is worth pursuing.”

But questions abound: Will there be enough electric cars to justify the charging equipment? Will AeroVironment be able to catch up to the competition since other California companies already are installing charging stations? And should they focus on setting up charging stations similar to gas pumps or selling them to electric car buyers for home use?

As for the last question, Helsel said AeroVironment envisions the charging stations – which haven’t been named – inside home garages, along curbs for street parking, at large corporate parking lots and even next to gasoline pumps.

The company has designed two devices that would charge cars faster than regular wall sockets, which can only offer a charge of 120 volts. One, which can mount on a wall and is intended for residential use, offers a two- to six-hour recharge at 220 volts. The other, which resembles a gas pump, would be installed at filling stations and commercial sites such as shopping malls and company parking lots, and would offer a 10-minute recharge at 600 volts.

The company is waiting for final approval in the next couple of months from the Society of Automotive Engineers, which sets industry standards for most auto equipment. It plans to start selling and installing the stations early next year.

In 1987, GM teamed up with the company to build a solar-powered electric car called Sunraycer for a trek across Australia. Sunraycer beat the competition and made world headlines. Two years later, AeroVironment provided charging technology for GM to increase the range of the automaker’s vehicle battery packs for its first all-electric vehicle, initially known as the Impact, but later built as the EV1.

GM halted EV1 production in the late 1990s, but AeroVironment kept up with the technology. That led to developing fast chargers for industrial electric vehicles using lithium ion batteries that are now in GM’s first mass-market effort that debuted this month, the Volt.

“I think that their experience dealing with the EV1 has helped poise them to enter the market with firsthand knowledge of how electric vehicles can and cannot work,” said Britta Gross, director of GM’s Global Energy Systems and Infrastructure Commercialization in Detroit. “This is a real serious effort on our part this time and I think it’s smart for companies now to look at the opportunities for building this infrastructure.”

‘Chicken vs. egg’

The question of whether there are enough cars to justify an infrastructure for charging is comparable to a “chicken vs. egg” debate. Auto industry insiders and experts wonder if the electric cars will have to come out first to motivate companies to buy and install charging stations or if the infrastructure must be established before the cars come out to give consumers confidence that there are sufficient refueling options.