Mark Visbeek Blog

This project is a nine month MSc. graduation assignment at electrotechnical company ALFEN bv in Almere, the Netherlands. The project concerns the research, design and development of public charging points for electric vehicles.

Chevrolet Volt Plugged - Photo from Jalopnik.com

Update: October 15th, 2009
Yesterday the E-Laad Foundation was launched. This foundation and their website E-Laad.nl is an initiative of the cooperating Dutch utility companies and aims  at having 10,000 electric vehicle charging points installed throughout the country by 2012.

The charging points they will be using are variants for on the street and in parking garages or other public places. I am very excited to announce that their intentions are to use the charging point I designed for ALFEN as their main product. Therefore we are working hard on finishing the details of the design and aim at starting up series-production in the next couple of months.

Update: September 20th, 2009
Starting October 1st, ALFEN bv will hire me as a part-time product developer, and the project will be disconnected from my graduation assignment. For ALFEN, I will guide the start-up of the series-production and work on the design and development of several product variants.

Update: September 3rd, 2009
The assignment is currently nearing its end-phase, and I am working hard on converting the CAD-model of the new design to a production model. Within several weeks from now, the first prototype will be completed, and as of January 2010 the production of the first series of 1,000 products will start, followed by the production of 3,000 and 6,000 pieces in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

January – September, 2009
Due to the confidential nature of this project, I cannot share much information about the process and the results. However, anything that is not restricted is shown and described below.

Client:

ALFEN bv, Almere
Enexis Infra Products
University of Twente – MSc. Graduation Assignment

Assignment:
Research, design and develop public charging points for electric vehicles.

Date:
January – September 2009

Specifics:
Nine month Industrial Design Engineering MSc. graduation project. Working on research, design and development in a small product innovation and -development team.