The Campbell, Calif.-based startup installs and networks charging stations for customers, such as businesses and government agencies, and it also makes money from providing charging services. Coulomb installs equipment from its own branded charging units or from other makers.

The Series D round included investors Braemar Energy Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Toyota Tsusho and Rho Ventures. Kleiner has also invested in electric car makers Fisker Automotive, which makes an extended range plug-in sports car, and Proterra, an electric bus maker.

The electric car market is only emerging, but if it takes off, then charging station services will be among the substantial sources of revenues in the market. Though electric car sales are tiny, the battle over service stations already has intensified, particularly with the recently announced plan by NRG Energy to install and own hundreds of charging stations as part of its $100 million legal settlement with California. NRG released details of its settlement last month and is waiting approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Entering the market early gives companies a first-mover advantage to woo consumers and build loyalty. But it also sets up those same charging equipment and service companies to failure if the electric car market doesn’t grow as quickly as anticipated. Success will hinge on these charging station companies figuring where the growth is and avoiding installing too many charging stations in one region.

Coulomb’s previous fundraising efforts included raising $15 million and another $14 million, both in 2010, and $3.8 million in 2009. The company also obtained a $15 million grant from the federal government to install charging stations. Last year, it teamed up with navigation equipment company TomTom to provide charging locator, reservation and information services for plug-in car drivers.

Photo courtesy of Coulomb Technologies

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Coulomb was one of the earlier startups to tackle the electric car charger space (see our video clip below), but there’s also been a rush of new charging station companies launched recently, including chargers from GE, Ecotality, Aerovironment, and Better Place. ClipperCreek, founded in 2006, is also an older startup that sells charging infrastructure. The Plug-In 2010 conference in San Jose in July was filled with new charging options.

Coulomb needs to ramp up quickly to be able to compete in a market that is getting rapidly crowded — hence the fund-raising. Coulomb just raised a Series B round of $14 million in February, and a Series A round of $3.8 million in 2009, bringing the company’s total funds raised to over $30 million.

Coulomb already has some significant sales, considering its startup status and the early state of the plug-in car charging market: The first mainstream all-electric Nissan LEAF just officially went on sale last month. Coulomb says it has shipped 850 stations to over 200 customers and has a Department of Energy-funded program that will lead to another 4,600 charging stations built in the U.S.

At the heart of it, the electric vehicle charging infrastructure business isn’t a great venture capital and startup play. It will eventually be a commodity business, which will be led by large companies that can scale quickly. The infrastructure will be standardized; the designs likely won’t play a huge role in differentiation; and it will eventually be the software that will be the valuable business proposition.

In the market’s nascent stage, some of these hardware startups could do pretty well. Expect acquisitions down the road, and then an eventual shakeout in the market. Coulomb was smart to partner with German energy and engineering giant Siemens as an investor and a strategic partner. Siemens has agreed to sell its smart grid IT products in conjunction with Coulomb’s smart electric vehicle charging stations, and Siemens Ventures is an investor in Coulomb.

The growing need for intelligent management of electric vehicle charging could create a $297 million industry in the U.S., and $1.5 billion globally as of 2015, according to analyst John Gartner of Pike Research. That market forecast encompasses the tech ranging from applications, servers, networking equipment and other hardware, to ongoing services for collecting and monitoring data about vehicle charging.

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IT Opportunities in Electric Vehicle Management

For the project, REV is converting three Ford Escapes and one Ford F150 with all-electric systems, batteries and a network connection that will help a utility or power producer store and balance energy on the grid. REV calls the converted vehicles its bi-directional Ancillary Power Vehicles (APVs). The company did the work as a subcontractor of Honeywell Aerospace, and is also working with battery maker Valence and electric vehicles charging company Coulomb Technologies.

REV’s ultimate business model isn’t necessarily to be a vehicle converter. REV CEO Jay Giraud told me recently that REV wants to own and manage a fleet’s batteries, then provide the software and hardware to manage the battery charging. There are so many electric vehicles on the market right now that REV has to help get them out there, and “no one else in the distribution chain wants to own all of the batteries,” said Giraud.

REV is also able to have several revenue streams that way: a fee for the vehicle conversion, a subscription for battery rental, and a subscription to its battery management service. Eventually, REV wants to have deals with OEMs to embed its technology in fleet vehicles, like the smaller,  fleet-focused Smith Vehicles of the world, said Giraud. The market for electric vehicle network management could one day be massive: estimated to pull in $297 million in the U.S. by 2015, according to Pike Research.

At this point, REV is only targeting private and public fleets for its vehicles and services. Giraud told me his thinks large auto makers like Nissan won’t allow V2G capabilities into consumer cars because they think it will break their warranties. The other argument is that consumers might be uncomfortable enabling V2G services in their cars, because of the notion of a utility sucking up their battery and causing range anxiety.

According to John Gartner of Pike Research, V2G will kick off in earnest in 2015, after the automakers have been selling EVs on the market for a half decade. By then, the research firm predicts that 800,000 plug-in vehicles will be sold, and the software and networked communication layer will be ready to manage EVs in unison helping aid the grid — and keeping utility operators minds at ease.

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IT Opportunities in Electric Vehicle Management

The trio, which makes of the EV Service Provider Coalition, have argued that the strict regulations covering public utilities could stifle innovation, competition and investment if extended to charging service providers, effectively halting an emerging industry in its tracks. The CPUC notes in its decision that a broad array of entities may take on the role of charging service provider. Those providers could include owners of standalone charge points, residential and commercial landlords that provide charging as a service to tenants or tenants’ customers, condo associations or employers offering charging as a service to residents or employees.

Utilities including PG&E meanwhile, have weighed in throughout the CPUC rulemaking and argued that electric vehicle charging service providers should in fact be considered public utilities, but face flexible or light-handed regulations covering things like safety, interoperability, and reliability of equipment and services. According to the CPUC’s decision, PG&E said “no need exists for traditional cost-based regulation of pricing, as long as no market power is demonstrated.”

“The industry is poised to take off in California, but this will only happen if there is at least a measure of assurance that an EV service provider will not be treated like an electric utility,” the EV Service Provider Coalition wrote in a comment filed with the California Public Utilities Commission last month. The group has also pushed for the CPUC to avoid boxing EV charging providers into a definition as entities that resell electricity, rather than providing an electric vehicle service.

The CPUC seems to have taken that to heart. In a release about its decision this week, the CPUC summarizes its decision, “that the sale of electric vehicle charging services to the public does not make a corporation or person a public utility solely because of that sale, ownership, or operation.” Commissioner Nancy Ryan added a statement that the decision “provides needed regulatory clarity to encourage the state’s entrepreneurs and investors to develop charging solutions that will satisfy consumer needs and work harmoniously with the electric grid. “

ECOtality President and CEO Jonathan Read welcomed the decision in a statement today, commenting that it will allow businesses to compete, which in turn will help lower prices and improve product quality. “While we believe electric vehicle infrastructure can be viable in diverse utility regulatory settings,” he said, “we value an open, innovative business environment, and are gratified to see California’s regulators are supportive of that position.”

Better Place’s VP of North America Jason Wolf told us in an interview earlier this year that one of the biggest reasons for a slower, more cautious electric vehicle infrastructure environment in California compared to some other markets has been a lack of clarity from the CPUC on this question of regulating charging service providers like utilities. Wolf said this uncertainty has made investors — the kind that put $350 million into Better Place in January for its efforts — less eager to move quickly to back a Bay Area network.

Getting today’s decision on the books will be a green light for these companies in some ways, but there’s still a long road for regulators to figure out how to handle this new industry. As ECOtality points out, the CPUC is specifically hanging onto the right to consider and possibly regulate other aspects of the electric vehicle and charging market, such as home installation, metering and rates.

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Behar told me he designed the WattStation so that the experience would be the complete opposite of pumping gas at a gas station. While gas stations are dirty, noisy, and harsh, Behar said, he tried to make the WattStation “friendly,” simple, welcoming, silent and “more like the greenery in the urban environment.” The WattStation’s rounded, angled screen, and changing LED lights echo an Apple gadget much more than the standard auto gear, a gas pump or a parking meter.

Gadi Amit, the founder and principal designer for San Francisco-based NewDealDesign, which is helping design Better Place’s charging stations, told me a similar sentiment to me back in 2008. He said NewDealDesign is taking a cue from the user experience of gadgets and cell phones for Better Place’s plug-in chargers and that means including familiar aspects like blinking LED lights and making the charging experience a couple-click “painless” process.

Both Amit and Behar emphasized that the design of the plug-in chargers could be a crucial aspect of getting consumers to embrace and use the stations, given how nascent and unfamiliar the technology and marketplace are. There’s very few plug-ins on the roads today in the U.S., but large automakers and startups are introducing the first mainstream vehicles over the coming 12 to 18 months. As Amit said to me, these chargers are for “mass deployment, not just for the rich and famous.”

Here’s 5 plug-in car charger designs. Weigh in on what design elements of the chargers you like best and why:

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IT Opportunities in Electric Vehicle Management

Job figures (“tens of thousands,” “hundreds”) are somewhat vague — given that this is a progress report on spending that’s meant to stimulate economic growth, coming from an administration that has been touting the green jobs created through Recovery Act investments. But the 8-page document does provide a snapshot of where these funds are going and what kind of changes the feds are hoping they’ll bring about. You can read the full report here, and check out our digit-by-digit highlights below.

1: Number of times that DOE mentions Ford and LG Chem in its report.

2: The number of factories producing advanced vehicle batteries in the U.S. in 2009. (Also the number of times that DOE mentions battery maker A123 Systems, Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive and Nissan in its report.)

4: The number of new battery plants that the DOE expects to be operational by year’s end.

5: Number of times that DOE mentions General Motors in its report.

9: The number of new battery plants slated to open in the U.S. in total with Recovery Act funds.

14: Number of years that the DOE expects electric vehicle batteries to last by 2015 (if recharged 1.5 times per week), compared to an estimated 4-year lifespan for batteries produced in 2009.

20: Percentage of the world’s production capacity for advanced vehicle batteries that will reside in the U.S. by 2012 as a result of Recovery Act investments. The DOE expects this to grow to 40 percent by 2015.

21: The number of plants helped along by stimulus grants that are expected to make components for batteries or electric vehicles.

26: Number of battery and component plants that have started construction, either breaking ground on new facilities or installing new equipment at an existing factory.

30: Number of factories that the DOE expects to come online producing advanced vehicle batteries in the U.S. by 2012.

33: Percentage by which the DOE expects the typical weight of an electric vehicle battery to drop by 2015 compared to 2009 batteries, thanks to improved energy density.

>50: Percentage of oil consumed in the U.S. that’s imported.

95: Percentage of power used to move cars, trucks, ships, trains and planes in the U.S. that comes from oil.

<500: The number of electric vehicle charging locations available in the U.S. prior to stimulus investments.

4,000: The DOE’s estimate of the dollar cost for a battery delivering 40 miles of electric range (in a plug-in hybrid, for example) in 2015, compared to an estimated $6,700 in 2013 and more than $13,000 in 2009.

5,000: The number of charging stations that Coulomb Technologies plans to deploy at residential and commercial locations in nine metro areas using a $15 million stimulus grant.

10,000: The DOE’s estimate of the dollar cost for the battery needed to give an electric car 100 miles of range by the end of 2015, compared to an estimated $16,000 in 2013 and $33,000 in 2009.

20,000+: The number of new electric vehicle charging stations expected to be available in the U.S. at residential, commercial and public locations by December 2013.

80 million: Number of additional square meters of separator materials for lithium-ion batteries that Celgard will be able to produce at its plant in North Carolina each year following completion of a factory expansion supported with a $49.2 million DOE grant.

5 billion: Amount in dollars that the DOE is investing in electric vehicle batteries, components, charging infrastructure and other efforts to “electrify America’s transportation sector” through the Recovery Act and the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program.

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The group, which will focus specifically on California, will start out by creating a research report around the economic impacts of the smart grid and members of the force include Oracle, Cisco, Nanosolar, Control4, Coulomb Technologies, Silver Spring Networks and OPower. The task force isn’t the first group like this, and earlier this year 10 companies including IBM, Control4, the Gridwise Alliance, and General Electric, launched the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC), which focuses on consumer education across the U.S.

If you haven’t been following the issue over the consumer backlash and the smart grid in California, here’s a refresher: PG&E didn’t do a very good job of educating consumers on the smart meters being installed at their homes, and there were a lot of complaints, including a lawsuit in Bakersfield, Calif. In (an albeit delayed) response, PG&E publicly apologized for its strategy, which looked at its smart meter roll-out solely as an infrastructure play, and has since then been beefing up its consumer outreach and call centers. This task force is clearly part of that effort.

Will the task force work, and smooth over the smart meter flap? Well, more information for consumers is always better and smarter research can help with better decision-making. I think PG&E has also gotten some pressure from the fledging smart meter industry to expand public education and do it in a group format via well-known consumer brands that score higher on affinity with consumers than a utility brand.

If the backlash over the smart meters in California escalates further it could seriously jeopardize the industry nationally. I think Maryland’s public regulator’s denial of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co’s smart grid project request, which would have deployed 2 million smart meters for all of its customers, was partly influenced by the California backlash. Recently San Francisco’s City Attorney Dennis Herrera rehashed the issue, and asked California’s energy regulators to stop PG&E from installing any more smart meters until a third party investigation into the accuracy of the meters has been completed. I don’t think that request wil go anywhere.

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Image courtesy of Jefferson Davis photostream.

While Siemens has been slower to move into the smart grid than fellow competitors like GE and Swiss-based ABB, over the past year Siemens has been making up for lost time, announcing a flurry of new projects and partnerships. Siemens says ultimately it wants to double its current growth rate in the smart grid sector to capture €6 billion ($8.48 billion) in global business over the next five years, compared to its current €1 billion ($1.41 billion) in estimated smart grid related revenues in the fiscal year ending Sept. 2009.

The company has the network to do it. Siemens is one of the few corporations out there that can lay claim to almost every share of the world’s current grid infrastructure, building everything from gas and wind turbines to high-voltage transmission cables to sensors and controls that monitor and manage the delivery of power to homes and businesses. Siemens has been looking at its smart grid portfolio as end-to-end infrastructure, and adding on electric vehicle charge points at the edge of the network is just an extension of that strategy.

But because Siemens is so large and has so many broad smart grid offerings, it also needs to partner with some of the smaller firms to deliver the most advanced technology across the network. Coulomb is just the latest of these deals.

Siemens has been working with eMeter, a well-funded startup with several large-scale contracts to help utilities manage their millions of new smart meters, and back in 2008 led a $12.5 million investment into the startup. Siemens recently announced a smart grid partnership and investment in BPL Global, a maker of smart distribution grid systems. And Siemens is also working with startup Viridity Energy to combine Siemens’ decentralized energy management system with Viridity’s system for managing “virtual power plants,” a collection of loads and distributed generation resources at office parks, university campuses or other discrete entities.

The growing need for intelligent management of electric vehicle charging could create a $297 million industry in the U.S., and $1.5 billion globally as of 2015, according to analyst John Gartner of Pike Research. That market forecast encompasses the tech ranging from applications, servers, networking equipment and other hardware, to ongoing services for collecting and monitoring data about vehicle charging.

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IT Opportunities in Electric Vehicle Management

Image courtesy of Coulomb Technologies.

The CPUC has been debating whether it will regulate electric vehicle service providers as though they are utilities, and late last month the commission proposed to decide against it. Commissioner Nancy Ryan explained (among other things) that owning or operating a vehicle charging station and selling the electricity from that station for the exclusive purpose of charging vehicles does not necessarily make the provider a public utility under state utility codes.

The decision is important because defining EV charging providers as entities that are reselling electricity could open up a hornets nest of legal and regulatory issues for this young market and could potentially stifle innovation.

Better Place, Coulomb and ECOtality, through their group the EV Service Provider Coalition, weighed in with formal comments on the proposal last week and generally praised the decision, while calling for some changes in the explanation. The Coalition writes that ambiguity in the regulators’ wording still leaves room for a “presumption that EV service providers are selling electricity when they are not.” This misunderstanding could potentially box EV service providers into the category of reselling electricity, the Coalition suggests.

Better Place urges the commission to clarify that “it is not clear at this point whether any EV service provider would, in fact, ‘sell’ electricity,” adding that many providers will themselves buy (rather than sell) electricity “at retail” for the purpose of charging batteries. This is a point that Better Place has been making throughout the CPUC rulemaking process, so it’s interesting that the proposed decision took this linguistic turn, but it could still change. Ann Bordetsky, who works on policy for Better Place emphasized to us in an interview earlier this year (GigaOM Pro, subscription required) that the CPUC proceedings represent a move to avoid problems down the road.

This is a huge issue for infrastructure providers. As the EV Service Provider Coalition explains, “The industry is poised to take off in California, but this will only happen if there is at least a measure of assurance that an EV service provider will not be treated like an electric utility.”

Better Place’s VP of North America Jason Wolf told us in an interview earlier this year that one of the biggest reasons for a slower, more cautious electric vehicle infrastructure environment in California compared to some other markets has been a lack of clarity from the CPUC on this question of regulating charging service providers like utilities. Wolf said this uncertainty has made investors — the kind that put $350 million into Better Place in January for its efforts — less eager to move quickly to back a Bay Area network.

Photo courtesy of Better Place

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