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GE To Buy 25,000 EVs, Starting With the Chevy Volt
DeviceGuru writes "In what's claimed as the largest-ever single electric vehicle commitment, GE plans to acquire 25,000 electric vehicles by 2015. The buying spree will initially involve 12,000 GM vehicles, beginning with GM's Chevy Volt in 2011. By converting most of its own 30,000-strong global fleet, and promoting EV adoption among its 65,000 global fleet customers, GE hopes to be in a strong position to help deploy the vehicles' supporting infrastructure, including charging stations, circuit protection equipment, and transformers. In contrast to the all-electric Nissan Leaf, the Volt implements a small gas engine, which can recharge the vehicle's battery to extend its range beyond the 100 mile limit of all-electric cars like the Leaf, leading some to question the Volt's EV credentials."
$40,000 is still not a car for the masses.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Switching their fleet to plugin vehicles makes a lot of sense for GE, especially in the long run. If it actually helps accelerate the rate of plugin vehicle adoption, electricity demand could increase significantly. GE would absolutely love that... it would probably help them sell more nuclear reactors, like the ESBWR (near-term) and the PRISM (long-term).
Getting tired of Slashdot... moving to Usenet comp.misc for a while.
You're right. There is no infrastructure to support electric vehicles.
What we need is some kind of nation-wide distribution network for electrical power. That's probably decades away assuming you can find someone willing to spend the billions of dollars to install one.
Oh wait...
What you're missing: You charge your vehicle primarily at home - where your car spends the vast majority of its unused time anyway. Charging stations external to that are a bonus but not strictly required. For example you might have an exterior outlet on your office building you can use in lieu of a dedicated charging bollard.
If you're one of the people who think there must be an exact gas station analog in place for electric vehicles, you are wrong. The entire premise of EVs is that the "energy economy" they work in is completely different; distributed instead of centralized. Every outlet is a potential "gas station."
=Smidge=