GM, Utilities Partner To Advance Plug-In Hybrids

chareverie writes "General Motors is forming a team with utility companies nationwide to create a charging infrastructure for electric cars. Their goal is to improve the design of charging stations — making them weatherproof and child-proof, for example — in locations such as public garages, meters, and parking lots. They're also working on ways to avoid overwhelming the utilities during peak hours. Their goal is to have these improved charging stations implemented by 2010, when the Chevy Volt is introduced. Everyone recognizes however that a national car-charging infrastructure would be far from complete at that time."

Comments

Re:With GMs luck.

[Baddas]

... The reasons are simple: not only is it better for the environment, but it requires far less (maybe even none depending on how you drive) of a non-renewable resource like oil.

Neither of those is a decent reason in the face of hydrocarbon alternatives. Here's a good reason even with them:

Electric cars are simpler and more reliable than internal combustion cars, and will cost less for the same utility.

Re:With GMs luck.

[Anonymous Coward]

For your last point, my understanding is that you need to think about it in terms of point-source pollution. It's easier to mitigate 1000 pounds of pollution from one source than it is to mitigate 1 pound of pollution from 1000 sources.

Re:Super Capacitors.

[Sponge Bath]

Most homes can't charge one of these things, at "pump speeds"

How about a super capacitor based charger in the home that slowly fills from the grid and can provide a quick charge to the car? It could double as a squirrel population control device.

Re:Home outlet?

[pluther]

This to me is one of the biggest obstacles to our plug-in future. Those of you who live in the 'burbs where everybody has their own two-car garage may be shocked to hear this, but millions of us live in urban areas where we park our cars on the street, can't be gauranteed to find a spot in front of our houses, and wouldn't be able to run an extension cord across the sidewalk even if we could.

Cities could put charging stations right up to the curb.

San Francisco already does this in some places, where an outlet is built into many parking meters.

And several businesses and parking garages around the Bay Area have "electric car only" spaces next to the handicap spots that have charging stations there.

And that was all built just to support the EV-1, which doesn't even exist anymore. This kind of infrastructure is relatively cheap and easy to do. This isn't some kind of pie-in-the-sky pipe dream.