When the leaders of Ecotality selected that name, they did it for a purpose. Eco of course for the “green side” of the equation and “tality” for the link to “totality”, or “all encompassing”. As they have been developing technologies and solutions for an energy hungry planet that also needs to respect the environment, they have also been keen to add synergistic technologies that bring them closer to the goal of “in total” solutions.
On Dec. 11th, 2007 Ecotality (trading under the symbol ETLY) announced it had completed the acquisition of Minit Charger, a subsidiary of Edison International, a NYSE-listed company. Minit-Charger is a fast battery charging system that enables a more environmentally-friendly, energy and cost efficient means of recharging forklifts and other mobile material handling equipment, which fully complements their eTec division. eTec stands for Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation (eTec), which is a subsidiary of ECOtality.
On the surface, an investor might not see the importance of such an acquisition, but if he were to do a slight bit of investigating, he’d see that this is a tremendous benefit. When we as a collective whole, consider material handling, usually it’s pictures of trucks and trains come to mind. Yet those are the vehicles that move the bulk products from point A to point B. What happens when the product is actually offloaded from a rail car or a tractor trailer? More times than not, an army of small mobile equipment swarms into action. These are the fork lifts, the “Hi-Lo’s,” the pallet jacks. Every company has one, from the local grocery store that off loads pallets full of groceries, to the Sam’s club warehouses, to the lumber yard to the plumbing supply house to ad-infinitum. Yet almost to a Tee, the bulk of such vehicles have always been run on gasoline, propane, or even diesel fuel.
As one can imagine, that causes several problems. First off is the exhaust. All those methods of powering the fork trucks produce deadly exhaust emissions, exhaust that at the local level causes eye, nose and throat irritation and even lung complications. Special air filters, scrubbers and collectors have to be installed at a premium price. At the wider level, it all combines to propagate global warming, something all businesses are becoming more attune to. Secondly no matter how well insulated and toned down, they all have the noise factor to deal with. Running a fleet of diesel forklifts in a large grocery warehouse creates noise levels that are damaging to employee hearing.
To answer to these problems, companies have turned to battery powered equipment. Pallet jacks, hi – lo’s, fork trucks that run on electricity are quiet, exhaust free, and economical to operate. The eTec division, now with the “Minite – Charger” acquisition, enables Ecotality the ability to provide customers a way to recharge all those equipment batteries in a fraction of the time it used to take. Now instead of a pallet truck being down for several hours for recharge, the user can “plug in” during his lunch break and come back to a fully operational machine. The increase in productivity per machine and man hour of employee increases dramatically. Faster recharge, while maintaining battery integrity and lifespan has long been the “Holy Grail” of electric material handlers. Minite-Charge answered the call.
When potential customers are shown the economics, along with the benefits to air quality and noise levels, the choice is clear, battery operated yard equipment is the future, and Ecotality is poised to service them correctly. Considering that the bulk of the nations material handling infrastructure is still based on fossil fuel vehicles, the opportunity is enormous, and Ecotality has found an exciting way to provide these companies with the proper solutions. This is an exciting development and should be looked into closely.
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