It’s a summer sight to behold: Grand-prix-style racecars hitting speeds of 140 miles an hour on a street-level race course set up in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
It’s also a sound to behold. Instead of the deafening roar of gasoline racecars, these fully-electric vehicles emit a high-pitched whine that lets you hear the squealing tires as the drivers negotiate more than a dozen tight turns on the 1.5-mile course.
That’s the action, as the ABB FIA Formula E Championship series concludes its 10-nation season’s tour with two races in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, one thing is clear: The electric car – fast and fun – has finally arrived.
ABB, an international technology innovator with a big presence in the United States, has partnered with Formula E because the races provide a state-of-the-art showcase for electric transportation. E-mobility, as it’s known, is a field in which ABB is a global leader, whether in technologies for electric cars, buses, trains or ships.
The company is also a leading supplier to electric utility companies worldwide, with an expertise that includes integrating wind, solar and other sustainable energy into power grids -- the green energy that can make e-mobility a truly clean, climate-friendly form of transportation.
For consumers, electric cars are now cleaner, faster and more affordable than ever, with the leading automakers producing attractive models. The main drawback has been what might be termed the “filling-station gap” or “range anxiety.’’ With conventional cars, no one leaves home worrying whether they’ll make it back before running out of fuel, with nowhere to quickly top up the tank. But for years, that concern has limited the mass-market appeal, of electric cars.
Now, though, ABB is changing that dynamic. The world leader in fast-charging stations for electric cars. has launched their most powerful passenger vehicle charger to date, the Terra HP, capable of adding about 125 miles of driving range to an electric car’s battery in only eight minutes, about the amount of time it takes to visit a conventional gas station. More than 7,000 ABB charging stations have been installed for public use in 60 countries.
Thanks to the digital capabilities of the company’s ABB Ability™ offerings, ABB’s fast chargers are connected in networks that can be linked to electronic payment systems and can enable remote monitoring and maintenance from central control centers.
Two of the world’s biggest and fast-growing networks of charging stations are being installed in the United States, with both employing ABB chargers. One is EVgo, which now operates in 66 metropolitan areas and already has 500 ABB charging stations in place. The other is Electrify America, the biggest electric vehicle U.S. infrastructure project planned so for. Electrify America plans to place hundreds of charging stations within and around 17 major metropolitan markets and at intervals of 120 miles or less along nationwide highway corridors.
E-mobility. It’s a technology whose time has come. And ABB is bringing it to a roadside near you.
