Electric vehicle charging: Revvit says slower is better

Governments and businesses are spending billions to install fast chargers for electric vehicles. But a tiny Somerville startup called Revvit asks, what’s the hurry? If your car is going to be parked at the same spot for eight hours a day, an inexpensive slow charger will get the job done.

Revvit’s company logo is a turtle. But founder Ross Bloom believes that installing lots of cheap, slow “Level 1″ car chargers in parking lots nationwide will speed up consumer adoption of EVs.

By enabling drivers to slowly top off their batteries while they work or relax, “you’re going to be satisfying the vast majority of people’s driving needs,” said Bloom. And if companies deploy lots of Level 1 chargers, consumers will feel more confident about buying electric cars.

What’s a Level 1? It’s a car charger that relies on old-fashioned 120-volt current, generic juice from a standard wall outlet. By contrast, many EV owners install Level 2 chargers at their homes. These use 240-volt connections, like those required by electric stoves or laundry dryers. But with a Level 1 there’s no need for heavy-duty electrical wiring, so installation is much cheaper.

A Level 1 charger can only boost an EV’s range by four or five miles per hour of charging. But Revvit is targeting its chargers at long-term parking lots, like those at office buildings, airports, or hotels.

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For instance, as office workers pull their eight-hour shifts, their Revvit-connected cars will get an additional 40 miles of battery range. The US Department of Transportation says the average US motorist drives 40 miles a day. Locally, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation says drivers in Boston cover about 26 miles a day.

Bloom, who holds a history degree and an MBA, both from Harvard University, originally started Revvit in hopes of designing systems to recharge EVs parked on city streets, but he shifted his aim when he realized that commercial parking lots were an easier lift.

He’s starting off small. Revvit’s first two installations are at an office building parking lot in Concord, N.H., and at the Mountain Club hotel at New Hampshire’s Loon Mountain ski resort.

Steve Duprey, president of Foxfire Property Management, which owns the Concord parking lot, was glad to give Revvit’s slow charger a try. “We are fierce advocates of fighting climate change and doing whatever we can to help,” Duprey said. And he’s open to the idea of installing more.

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“I could foresee all parking lots of the future being built with this in place,” said Duprey, “because it is more cost-effective and cheaper to install than the Level 2 or Level 3 systems.”

Bloom said it cost about $2,000 to put in the Concord charger, which sits outdoors and had to be made rugged for winter weather. The Mountain Club indoor charger came in at less than $1,000. By contrast, he estimated that putting in more powerful Level 2 chargers would have cost $15,000 or more, largely due to the cost of running heavy-duty electrical conduit to handle the power load.

Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy NH, introduced Bloom to the right people at both companies. “When Ross came to me with this idea, I was primed and ready,” said Evans-Brown, who owns two electric cars.

Rather than install two costly Level 2 chargers at his home, he uses a standard power outlet to slowly charge the second car, a Nissan Leaf that only gets 70 miles of range on a full charge. The experience convinced Evans-Brown that Bloom’s slow-charging concept makes sense.

“He’s clearly got a really good idea,” said Evans-Brown, “and he’s clearly a really smart guy.”

Bloom, a former logistics manager at Amazon, is financing Revvit himself and is looking for investors. Meanwhile, other companies working on similar plans have already raised significant cash. For example, Palo Alto-based GoPowerEV, a startup supported by the Harvard Innovation Labs, has raised $4.5 million to install Level 1 and 2 chargers in apartment buildings. There’s also Orange Charger, a San Francisco company that has raised $6.5 million in seed money to install slow chargers.

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It’s good news for Revvit, in a way. With that much money going into slow-charging startups, Bloom really might be onto something.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @GlobeTechLab.