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Austria Converts Phone Booths To EV Chargers

Posted by samzenpus on from the calling-electricity dept.

separsons writes "Telekom Austria, a telecommunications company, aims to convert obsolete public phone booths into electric vehicle recharging stations. The company unveiled its first station yesterday in Vienna and hopes to create 29 more stations by the end of the year. The stations may not be super popular now, but they should be soon; Austria's motor vehicle association says the country will likely have 405,000 electric vehicles on the road by the year 2020."

16 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Something is wrong here... by T+Murphy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A company with outdated infrastructure changing it's business model to adapt to changing technology- all in a quick, relatively efficient process? Yeah, you've got to be pulling my leg.

    Wait, do you mean Corporate America isn't doing it right?

    --
    My webcomic
    1. Re:Something is wrong here... by masterwit · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But in future, payment, which is expected to cost a single-digit euro sum, will be via mobile phone, Ametsreiter said.

      Ah the irony...I personally welcome new healthy ideas into any market. (Free market with healthy regulation, whatever no political arguments needed here)

      Some more info:

      Telekom Austria's charging stations will leverage the group’s existing infrastructure: the company currently operates 13,500 telephone booths countrywide, of which 700 are multimedia stations. In the first phase, the focus will be on multimedia stations that offer on-street parking opportunities for electric vehicles. By installing additional charging points, each telephone booth will be able to recharge more than one vehicle at a time. By year-end 2010 a total of 30 charging stations will be on stream. According to a survey by Verkehsclub Osterreich, an association promoting environmentally sustainable, socially just and economically efficient mobility, the number of electric vehicles will significantly increase in Austria over the next few years, with e-scooters exceeding 60,000 and e-cars 115,000 by 2015.

      http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=33006&email=html

      Yes they did not go out on a limb to invest in phone booths, but using existing architecture in an economically and environmentally friendly way to address an emerging market, nice.

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    2. Re:Something is wrong here... by drsmithy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As a customer of Telekom Austria, I can assure you that nothing about that company is quick and efficient. They're the former state-run monopoly.

      People love to say this scornfully, but they seem not to realise that if "Telekom $SOME_COUNTRY" _wasn't_ a "former state-run monopoly" then if they didn't live within a hundred metres of their nearest neighbour they wouldn't even _have_ a phone service, and the mere idea of a practically free phone standing on the street would be absolutely laughable.

    3. Re:Something is wrong here... by Jurily · · Score: 3, Funny

      I loved the part where the submitter felt the need to clarify that Telekom Austria is a telecommunications company. Now if only he could tell us which country it's in...

  2. why, at that rate... by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 4, Funny

    Why, at that rate, they'll be able to simultaneously recharge 0.06% of the electric cars in the country!

    And with the usual 30 milliamp analog phone line current, it will only take about a dozen years to recharge each car.

    1. Re:why, at that rate... by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why, at that rate, they'll be able to simultaneously recharge 0.06% of the electric cars in the country!

      And with the usual 30 milliamp analog phone line current, it will only take about a dozen years to recharge each car.

      Phone booths in my country have lights for nighttime use so I suppose they have mains supply as well.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    2. Re:why, at that rate... by carlzum · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It probably has less to do with reuse than business opportunity. They provide a service that doesn't justify the maintenance of the booths. They could remove them and relinquish control of the locations. But apparently they control the rights over the locations (at least enough to install chargers) and they're probably convenient and accessible for EV owners. That's an advantage over anyone else trying to enter the market.

  3. Re:One question by SirWinston · · Score: 5, Informative

    > What's a phone booth?

    It's like a Police Box, but without the time travel...

    --
    "It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson
  4. Re:One question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    > What's a phone booth?

    It's like a Police Box, but without the time travel...

    Whoa! Dude! That's totally bogus.

  5. Location Location Location by lordlod · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I understand their desire to reuse the prime real estate they have for their phone boxes and convert it into a new profitable market.

    However in this case I'm not sure it will actually be so useful. Typically you position phone boxes in pedestrian heavy areas where people can see them and use them. Normally you would want recharging stations in car parks, where cars like to hang out for extended periods of time. Do you really want to base your business model over having cars parked beside the road in busy streets for 6.5 hours at a time? Looking at the phone booth in the picture there doesn't even seem space for a single car to stop.

  6. Re:One question by dakameleon · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm sorry, Yo Mama jokes with $variables just don't work.

    --
    Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
  7. bikes, not cars? by serps · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seems more practical to recharge bikes (either electric-assisted, or motorcycles), rather than cars.

    • You can physically get a bike closer to the telephone box than you can a car.
    • You can fill a bike battery an appreciable amount in an hour, given the system's power generation constraints.
    • You can fit a bunch of charging bikes around a box with bike rack technology
    • There's thousands of bike riders in that country already, unlike the car-heavy US
    --
    "Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
  8. Re:Terrible idea. by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Funny

    Only if Austria has phone booths in the Zoo enclosures

    How else would the Kangaroos get news from home?

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  9. Location Location Location by mindbrane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A handful of years ago I gave some thought to some business ideas that could make use of phone booths. I wondered if they could be viably transformed into secure, internet transaction booths, keeping the coin payment system as an option to CC payment. Phone booths have a high profile/key location thing going for them that's just waiting for the right entrepreneurial insight.

    --
    ideopath @ play
  10. About emissions displacement by tepples · · Score: 3, Insightful

    areas with a lot of rich ecoloons who think electricity is "clean" because the gas, oil and coal plants making it are located out in the sticks.

    The advantage of such "emissions displacement" is that it's a lot easier to clean the emissions from one big stationary engine than thousands of mobile engines.

  11. Re:Range of electric vehicles? by rtz · · Score: 3, Funny

    No, but you missed an important part of the story, I'll let you find the mistake yourself.

    Hint: You're about one half of a large rotating thing wrong.