The Future is coming, plug-in hybrids and electric car
Finally what we have been waiting for is becoming a reality.
General Motors is currently in serious arrangements with around 30 electric power utilities in 37 states and with the Electric Power Research Institute to develop a charging infrastructure for electric cars and plug-in hybrids.
By creating this alliance and decide how the infrastructure is going to be, these will ensure a technology that is implemented homogeneously across the market, becoming more secure, and more reliable to customers because charging ports and charging regimes for the technology would be implemented the same way.
General Motors is aiming for these car-charging stations to be implemented by the year 2010, when their new brain child the Chevy Volt is due to be produced and be on sale for hundreds of early adopters of the car offering.
The goals of developing these sorts of standards are to make it an affordable, reliable electricity source that is weather proof and child-proof and simple enough to be implemented in public garages, curb sides meters and workplace parking lots.
Another very important intentions of the alliance it to make the charging stations controllable in a certain way by utilities to prevent overloading the electric grid capacity during peak hours and challenge the reliability of electricity service.
It would much ideal for power utilities for these new electric loads on the grids for them to demand power during the off-peak hours when the demand is low and in some areas during the off-peak hours also the electricity is cheaper to the consumers.
The problem is that creating this sort of infrastructure takes time and new investment for a technology that is not even wide seen as a real alternative to transportation. Currently there are few options on the area of electric cars and plug-in hybrid, but as the prices on oil and cost of using hour gas car and trucks becomes an expenditure that eats much of our incomes, people would change their perceptions of new technologies that can make them save how they transport.
As for me, I am one of the hundreds of people that are very eager for a mass adaptation in the transportation industry for electric cars, because these give and edge for the transportation technologies and also allow for a big window of opportunity to free the dependence on pollution expensive oil. Electricity most come from clean renewable sources for this vision to work, but that complementations are very feasible and most be put into the hands and reach of all RIGHT NOW.
Resources:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9996348-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
