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Monrovia firm to build electric vehicle charging stations in South Carolina

Electric vehicles are few and far between in South Carolina at the moment, but Monrovia technology company AeroVironment Inc. is helping prep the state for what it hopes will be a clean car renaissance.

The company will build 60 to 100 fueling stations for electric vehicles in seven Southern Carolina cities as part of a contract with the nonprofit Plug-In Carolina, which is sponsored by the state’s major utilities.

“We’re not expecting that these stations will be used that much this year,” said James Poch, executive director of Plug-In Carolina. “It won’t be until next year, with the [electric] Ford Focus hitting the road, roughly in the time frame that the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt will start to get noticed.”

AeroVironment will start installing June 15, with the stations expected to be operational by Dec. 1. The project is being funded largely through two state grants from the South Carolina Energy Office worth $480,000.

The stations will be able to charge one to four vehicles at a time and customers will be able to remotely check whether the stations are occupied.

AeroVironment was one of 11 bidders who began vying for the project in April, Poch said. The companies were evaluated based on factors such as their industry prominence and the technical specs, pricing and aesthetics of their proposals.

The contract is only the second electric car charging deal ever announced by AeroVironment, said spokesman Steven Gitlin. The company is also preparing to roll out home charging docks that it will install nationwide as Nissan brings its Leaf vehicle to the market.

“We were focusing on home-charging infrastructure with Nissan, but South Carolina is looking at the importance of public infrastructure as a complement,” Gitlin said. “It makes for an environment that is more conducive to electric vehicle owners.”

The company is “actively talking” with several other automakers, government agencies, utilities and private enterprises about supplying more public and home charging stations

“It’s a very large market opportunity,” Gitlin said. “We’ve spent the last 20 years developing charging technology, and now it needs to be made pervasive and accessible.”

Skype to charge iPhone users for 3G network calls

IPhone users should be advised to save their nickels and dimes.

Alongside the announcement that AT&T will cap its data plans -- finally bringing its Internet offerings more in line with the guessing game that is the cellphone calling plan -- Skype says it intends to charge iPhone users for calls made over AT&T's 3G network later this year.

Skype said it has no plans to charge Verizon Wireless' smart-phone customers to get the same feature.

Skype has traveled a long road in bringing an application to the iPhone that allows calling over AT&T's wireless network. AT&T, the nation's second-biggest telecom did not allow voice-over IP transmissions until it changed its policy in October.

For its part, Apple didn’t accept VoIP apps for its online marketplace until this year, and it wasn’t until this week that Apple approved a new version of the Skype app, Skype spokeswoman Jennifer Caukin said. In three days, it was downloaded 5 million times. The previous version, which allowed calls only when the phone was connected to Wi-Fi, was downloaded 12 million times in the 14 months it was available.

Caukin wouldn't specify how much a 3G call might cost or when exactly the fees would kick in. It's free now, and she asserted that calls made on a Wi-Fi connection would remain free.

But a company spokesman also said in July 2009 that Skype-to-Skype calls (those made between people signed in to their accounts rather than to landlines or cellphones) "are always free, forever." Forever is a long time.

"We've thought long and hard about this for a while," Caukin said on the phone Wednesday. "It's the first time that we've monetized our mobile products in such a way."

Skype calling on the iPhone is fantastic. The app will be even more handy when Apple's update to the iPhone operating system hits (expected next month), which will allow you to do other tasks on the phone while making a call. Skype claims CD-quality sound, and in fact, calls sound much better than using the phone's actual telephone function.

But the same is true for Skype on Verizon phones, which, according to Caukin, will remain free. So why then are iPhone customers expected to pay up while users of Google's Android phones on Verizon won't?

Caukin said Skype would be affordable and in line with the value it provides to iPhone users. (Which made us wonder: Does it therefore provide no value to Verizon customers?) Skype has been looking for additional revenue sources as usage increases and since eBay sold its stake in the company in November.

When asked if AT&T would split the VoIP fees with Skype, Caukin declined to comment. An AT&T spokeswoman deflected questions about Skype fees.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

Photo: Darryl Bush / McClatchy Tribune

Facebook, Google Maps reign supreme in mobile market

Roxio CinemaNow and the maturing market for downloadable movies

I was introduced to CinemaNow almost a decade ago by its first CEO, Curt Marvis, who briefed me on the downloadable movie service while I was working for the San Jose Mercury News. And after almost a decade of indifferent results, the company may finally be taking off.

Originally based in Marina del Rey, CinemaNow made its formal launch in 2001 with the help of investor Lionsgate, which licensed its films for downloading as soon as they hit the pay-per-view channels on cable. Other studios were not so forthcoming, however, which is one reason the company struggled to build a customer base. Other hurdles included the consumer-unfriendly conditions that studios placed on downloadable flicks (e.g., making it all but impossible for customers to watch the movies they rented or bought on a living-room TV set) and the pokey broadband connections that were common in the first half of the decade.

The company gradually shifted its focus away from its online store, concentrating instead of providing the technology that would enable retailers and consumer-electronics manufacturers to offer movie downloads through their own websites or devices. Still, the prospects for CinemaNow were so uncertain that Sonic Solutions of Novato was able to buy it from investors for only $3 million in 2008. (Marvis had left earlier that year to become Lionsgate's head of digital media.)

Sonic reported its quarterly earnings Thursday, and its numbers reflect how the company has shifted ...

... from the costly process of building a digital distribution platform to the more lucrative practice of deploying it. While revenue was slightly less than than the same quarter last year, net losses were significantly lower.

CEO Dave Habiger said the company invested more than $300 million on the "plumbing" for distributing movies through the platform it now calls Roxio CinemaNow. "For the most part, the building is built," he said. "Additionally, you actually have people using it, renting and paying you."

One reason more people are using CinemaNow is that the company has closed the gap between the Web and the TV set. Its technology is embedded in a rapidly growing number of Internet-connected TV sets, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes, enabling people to rent or buy movies from their couch with a few clicks of the remote, then watch them minutes later.

That beats the heck out of downloading a movie to a specially equipped PC and burning it onto a copy-protected disc, as Hollywood requires for its online releases. (Sonic makes the technology for that, called Qflix, but it's a better fit for DVD-on-demand services.)

Habiger said 300,000 devices with the CinemaNow service were in the field in September. The number grew to 1 million in December, and now stands near 1.4 million, he said. In December and January, the number of people who started using the service grew by "multiples of 10."

And that's just the start. The company expects the number of devices with its technology to rise to 3 million by the end of June, and to 30 million a year after that. That's because it has deals with a number of major equipment makers (e.g., Samsung, LG and Funai) and Best Buy. The latter deal, Habiger said, will result in CinemaNow technology being embedded in every TV and set-top sold at Best Buy that's equipped to pull content off the Internet. 

Another factor that Habiger expects to help Sonic is the studios' evolving attitude about digital distribution. Noting the deal Netflix struck with Warner Bros. to delay DVD rentals until they've been on sale for four weeks, Habiger said there's growing interest among Hollywood executives in giving downloads an advantage over discs. That's one way studios could push back against cheap DVD rental services such as Redbox, which generate lower profit margins for Hollywood than digital services can.

The studios' growing enthusiasm for the Net will help Sonic's competitors too, including Amazon.com, Apple and Blockbuster. Even so, the industry has much yet to learn about what prices and business models consumers will embrace. And the studios' contracts with conventional distributors limit the ability of online outlets to experiment with subscription services, a la Netflix. Still, Habiger likes the position Sonic is in today. "How you price it is easy," he said. "Building a platform is not easy."

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division. Follow him on Twitter: @jcahealey