Stylish car charging stations by Yves Behar and GE

SF designer Yves Béhar has teamed up with General Electric to come up with a cool new concept for car charging stations.

The WattStation comes imbedded with GE's Smart Grid technology which enables the station to charge a vehicle in 4-8 hours compared to the typical 12-18. By communicating wirelessly with digital platforms and mobile devices, users will be able to remotely locate, operate and monitor the unit. The WattStation is also the very first charging station with a self-retractable charging cable, keeping streets tidy while protecting the cable from weather elements. All of these innovations are jammed tight into a compact metal shell, which is solidly constructed to withstand any harsh weather and usage conditions. It even has a built-in heater to defrost the snow!

fuseproject [via Dezeen]

I'm a contributing editor here at Boing Boing. I also have a blog (TokyoMango), a book (Urawaza), and I freelance for Wired, Make, the NY Times Magazine, PRI's Studio360, etc. I'm @tokyomango on Twitter.

MORE: Gadgets

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Anonymous

I always dreamed of a future with giant plastic depilators on every corner.
echolocate chocolate

They look like cheap karaoke microphones, or maybe a slim electric razor. Can’t say I’m a fan.

They should either look outlandishly futuristic or be tediously mundane, like cast iron parking meters. Or they should pop out of hatches in the ground with all the complicated gubbins underground where people can’t easily break them.
Anonymous

Christ, are you all on anti-depressants or something ? This is a big, f-in deal and a good sign that we’re already into the beginning of the transition off of fossil fuels.

As for aesthetics – would you rather have a bunch of those in your neighborhood, or several ugly-ass gas stations that could take out a city block if they exploded, and cost a fortune to convert into anything else because of the underground tanks ?
BookGuy

Finally, our conversion from foreign oil to coal-generated electricity can begin in earnest!
- Anonymous
  
  We need more nuclear energy.
- apoxia
  
  Hey, not every country relies heavily on coal-generated electricity. NZ uses 60% renewable energy.
  - BookGuy
    
    Good point, apoxia. Here’s hoping the US will get there, too. I just can’t get excited about fully electric cars in the US knowing that we’re just trading one fossil fuel for an even dirtier one.
    - Cnoocy
      
      There’s a lot you can do with an electrical grid to reduce the environmental impact of the energy generated, from replacing the power plant to installing distributed solar or wind power at consumer’s homes. There’s much less that you can do with a combustion engine in a car.
Dungeonbrownies

This is a pretty cool idea, and I like how large an effort this is. Seems tons better than the previous attempts at putting up charging stations which were prety far and few in between. I imagine these will probably soon be covered in dog piss and pigeon crap before some random jackass plows into one and electrocutes himself.
Anonymous

GM locked up the safe designs with intellectual property shenanigans. Whatever you get will suck by comparison, trust me.
Anonymous

wow great gadget!!!
Standish

Can’t see them surviving in a street situation for long. Interesting, that one mock up shot. Looks like they used a stock street picture from the UK. (Jumbled parking, pre-2001 Ford Fiesta with wrenched-off mirror, Georgian doorways, shared front steps, pan tiling, chimney pots, and somehow hazier sun than California shots.) Seems weird.
Anonymous

well here’s my scenario. Me and friends tool up to Santa Fe and pull the the curb. I deposit my $5 and pull the charge cord out and plug my car for the trip back to Albuquerque later. Off we go to shop..do lunch..listen to music on the plaza, and head back at the end of the day. Arriving at the car we find the charge cord cut in two by some juvenile vandal. But damn that charge station sure looks good!
GlenBlank

I think seyo’s comment at #5 bears thinking about, and I find myself wondering if the really cool way to go with something like this wouldn’t be a basic set of innards with a series of decorative ‘skins’ in different styles – florid Victorian Cast iron, Art Deco aluminum, Mid-Mod enamel and chrome, contemporary black glass and stainless steel, etc. – that could be applied as necessary to harmonize with surroundings.

Attention to aesthetic detail is a key component of livable urban spaces.
Symbiote

That’s awful, it’s far too bulky.

Why not something slim?

(Preferably not on the street either, cars take up too much space in cities, regardless of how they’re powered.)
- SamSam
  
  That’s a good point — we’re supposed to oooh over how slim and elegant they are, but actually they are way fatter than they need to be. It’s just a big plug fergoshsakes.
  
  Better idea: panels on the sidewalk (not fancy flat-screen panels, just metal panels — feel free to walk on them and not notice them) that you can pop open (not in a fancy electric way, more like a manhole way) to pull out the cord. Reasons: No ugly aesthetic clashing, no getting run-into or having dogs piss against them, less chance of vandalism.
  
  The problem is, it wouldn’t look high-tech enough for either GM’s campaign or for the fancy design company.
  
  @teapot: Thanks. That was great. :D
Anonymous

Wow! These stylish car charging stations are fiendishly camouflaged as Chinese giant salamanders to reduce the incidence of vandalism. No one gonna’ mess wid’ dem!
S2

Given the number of vandalized air hoses I see at gas stations & convenience stores, I have to wonder how long those exposed cables will last in a human environment….
- Brainspore
  
  Vandalism rates will doubtlessly vary quite a bit by neighborhood, just like public phone booths. (Remember those?)
SamSam

I couldn’t play the video with sound on at my work, so maybe they said this, but are any of these actually expected to be in production? Is there a working prototype somewhere? Or is this just a concept that won’t get off the ground?
gibson5string

GE’s new “copper for the homeless” campaign?
icerunner

I love the care with which the concept artists chose the suburban scene. The second car in has a broken wing mirror hanging off. Very authentic.
Thorzdad

Of course, since this thing is simply a non-functioning CG mock-up of a concept, it may, or may not, actually have all the bells-and-whistles elaborated to in the text, once it goes into production…if it goes into production. Industrial designers are very good at inventing groovy forms and then tacking-on a laundry list of cool stuff the object “has” or “does.”
seyo

I don’t find them stylish or cool at all. They completely clash with the architectural environment of that mockup. If there ever was a case for steampunk design to applied IRL, this would be it. I want to see these in more decorative, floral cast iron form. Like the lamp posts in Central Park.
- teapot
  
  I don’t find them stylish or cool at all. They completely clash with the architectural environment of that mockup. If there ever was a case for steampunk design to applied IRL, this would be it.
  
  I concur! Here’s my rendition
  
  I find myself wondering if the really cool way to go with something like this wouldn’t be a basic set of innards with a series of decorative ‘skins’ in different styles
  
  Glen Blank:
  The concept company already ran that idea…. only their ‘skins’ are awful. They may suit a lego set, but that’s about it.
  
  While we are having a go at this Photoshop disaster: the shadows are all wrong. Compare with the mirror shadow, bottom right.