Prosecution Stands By the Charging in Monsignor's Appeal

A change in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office's position on whether high-level officials in the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia could be successfully prosecuted is not an argument that can help the appeal of the first Catholic Church official in the country to be convicted of endangering the welfare of children abused by other priests, prosecutors argued in court papers.

AT&T to Introduce Solar-Powered Charging Stations

Starting Tuesday, 25 solar-powered charging stations will sprout in parks, beaches and other outdoor spaces in the five boroughs, part of a pilot project from the wireless provider in partnership with the city. The stations — 12.5-foot steel poles with three petal-shaped solar panels fanning out on top — can accommodate up to six devices at a time regardless of wireless carrier, with dedicated ports for iPhones, Androids, BlackBerrys and standard USB charging cables.

Designed by a Dumbo-based firm, Pensa, with solar technology from Goal Zero, a mobile solar start-up, they are to remain in place in spots like Union Square Park, Metrotech Plaza and Rockaway Beach for three to four weeks at a time until October. If successful, AT&T could expand to other cities. The project will cost $300,000 to $500,000.

“We view this as a commitment to being a part of the New York community as a corporate citizen but also as a way for New Yorkers to continue to engage with their technology as they continue to consume more and more data,” said Marissa Shorenstein, president of AT&T’s New York division.

It is also good for the company’s bottom line. The city has more mobile customers than in any other market, and executives, who have promoted use of their network by providing free wireless in subways and at parks and cultural events, realized there was a need for more frequent charging.

And it is the biggest area of growth for the major telecommunications companies, said Eddie Hold, vice president of the Connected Intelligence unit at NPD Group, a market research firm.

“People are making less phone calls than they’ve made before and more importantly the newer generation of people are really not making many phone calls,” he said. “To make money out of data services the telecom companies need to convince you to connect as many devices as possible. The more you connect, the more data you use, the more money they make.”

The spark for the project came after Hurricane Sandy, when AT&T supplied diesel generators and cell towers on wheels to hard-hit neighborhoods in the five boroughs.

Working with Goal Zero, which makes portable solar chargers, and Pensa, which had been experimenting with creating stationary street chargers, the company won approval this spring from city Parks Department officials to test them. They will rotate locations — including Orchard Beach in the Bronx, Governors Island, Pier 59 in Hudson River Park, Coney Island, the Staten Island Zoo and several cultural events.

In creating and testing the stations, said Chris Abbruzzese, vice president for marketing at Goal Zero, they found that consumers are aware of exactly how much of a charge they need to power a phone or tablet for, say, a commute home. Three 15-watt panels and a 168-watt-hour lithium ion battery pack can keep the stations operating through the night or five days without sunshine. The stations will allow a user to fill a smartphone in two hours, or grab a 30 percent charge in 30 minutes.

On an Electric Highway, Charging Into the Future

LAST Monday I drove the Model S, a full-size sedan recently introduced by Tesla, the California electric-car start-up, from Lake Tahoe to Los Angeles. I covered 531 miles and the drive took 11.5 hours, during which the car consumed zero gasoline and produced no tailpipe emissions.

My route, the first a Model S owner might take using Tesla Motors’ network of so-called Superchargers, previewed a significant advance in the practicality of battery-electric cars. Tesla’s string of strategically placed high-speed chargers made possible something that has not been available to American E.V. drivers: the ability to make a long-distance drive in a single day.

The Supercharger, Tesla’s name for a proposed nationwide network of electric-car filling stations, outlines the most tangible blueprint so far of petroleum-free driving in the United States. “The one big holdout with most E.V.’s today is that you can’t take a road trip,” said J B Straubel, Tesla’s chief technical officer. “What happens if I want to go across the country? I can’t tell you how many times we get that question.”

Tesla’s answer is to install powerful charging stations — pumping electricity at 90 kilowatts, adding about 250 miles of range in an hour — at key locations between major cities. There’s plenty of range for intracity travel. The goal of the charging network is to enable intercity journeys, eventually on a nationwide basis.

Before the end of October, the company plans to open its first charging locations to customers who have bought the Model S. Owners with the 85-kilowatt-hour battery, which comes equipped to use the Supercharger system (the fast-charge capability is optional on the 60 kilowatt-hour model) will receive free electric fuel for life at the stations.

Mr. Straubel said he saw the high-speed chargers as “the final piece of the whole technology suite” enabling Tesla to “take on an enormous part of the market we couldn’t reach before.”

My journey began at 6:55 a.m. at Kings Beach, Calif., elevation 6,000 feet, on Lake Tahoe’s north shore. The 85-kilowatt-hour battery pack, which has an E.P.A.-rated range of 265 miles, was only three-quarters full when I left, but the Model S had no trouble with the 100 miles, much of it downhill, to the first charger in Folsom, Calif. When I arrived, the battery pack still held 40 percent of its capacity.

At 9:25 a.m. in Folsom I pulled the Model S close to the pedestal that carries the charging cable, which is only four feet long to ensure that it never falls to the ground and gets run over. The Supercharger itself, about the size and shape of a small refrigerator, sits 30 feet away. Plugging in was as easy as charging at home and simpler than using a gas pump.

On the Model S, the fast charger connects to a port hidden behind a door in the driver-side taillight — the same one used for lower-power refueling at home.

Amenities near the Folsom charger, as with other Tesla network locations, were not an obvious match for the automaker’s upscale demographic. Tesla identified places close to chain restaurants, restrooms, Wi-Fi and motels.

Twenty-two minutes after plugging in, the charger had restored 100 miles of range in the Model S. It took another 20 minutes to add the next 50 miles because the rate of charging tapers down as the battery fills. Think of it as electrons having more difficulty squeezing into an increasingly crowded space. The smart strategy for fastest charging is to arrive at a destination with a nearly empty battery.

Another five minutes of charging brought the estimated range to 254 miles, enough to make it to the next stop, Coalinga. Tesla engineers advised holding my speed to 70 miles per hour just to make sure. No restrictions were placed on air-conditioner use, though.

The Supercharger is clever in its construction. It starts with the same 10-kilowatt charger that is onboard every Model S. To build the Supercharger, the company strings together 12 of the same units, which were designed from the beginning as building blocks.

“It’s good modular engineering,” Mr. Straubel said. “We configured all the circuitry, the power and the communications so we can just stack them up.”

Each Supercharger can serve two cars, and most locations will have three units. With solar panels planned for many locations, operating costs are expected to remain low, perhaps explaining the free recharges.

My lunch stop at Harris Ranch, a hacienda-like restaurant, added 153 miles of range before my burger even arrived. So I cleared the charging spot for another Model S, a Tesla company vehicle that had joined the trip, and returned to lunch. With way more energy than I would need to reach the next station 115 miles away, I made up time by flying along with Interstate 5’s speedy traffic.

At 4:30 p.m., at the Lebec station — the first Tesla station to incorporate solar panels — I was content to add 117 miles of range in 25 minutes.

The final run to Tesla’s Southern California design center in Hawthorne was uneventful. I arrived at 6:30 p.m., almost 12 hours after leaving Tahoe. The Supercharger concept worked.

Driving a gas-powered car averaging 60 miles per hour, stopping one hour for lunch and twice for 15-minute rest stops, would have cut my travel time by one hour.  In my electric test car, if I had eaten my lunch on the go, the duration would have been much the same.

The transition from a day on the Interstates to an evening in Los Angeles, where a ceremony to introduce the Supercharger concept to a crowd of Tesla fans, was jarring.

After delivering a stilted, ad-libbed speech, Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, dropped the curtain from a glowing 40-foot object, apparently a charging location roadside sign, but unmistakably phallic in shape. I didn’t see anything like it on my trip.

Let’s hope that the cheap theatrics will fade, to be replaced by a more realistic image: thousands of E.V. owners on electric road trips, eating at highway fast-food restaurants and experiencing the open road like other Americans.