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8 US States Pushing For 3.3 Million Electric Cars
An anonymous reader writes "A coalition of eight U.S. states, including New York and California, have announced a plan to get 3.3 million zero-emission electric vehicles onto their roads by 2025. 'The states, which represent more than a quarter of the national car market, said they would seek to develop charging stations that all took the same form of payment, simplify rules for installing chargers and set building codes and other regulations to require the stations at workplaces, multifamily residences and at other places.' An editorial in Quartz says that while the initiative itself is fine, the states should really take cues from Tesla if they want to plan out an infrastructure that will convince people to switch. ' For longer distances, [Tesla drivers] can stop at "Supercharger" stations strategically placed along highways that let them add 150 miles of range in as little as 20 minutes. Currently, [government] money is being spent on installing much-slower chargers at stores, shopping malls and other urban locations in the hope that drivers will use them. Tesla says it will blanket the US with its Superchargers for a fraction of the cost, because it studies the driving patterms of its customers and installs charging stations only where they tend to travel. This isn't hard; most other electric cars also record their drivers' habits. If privacy concerns could be addressed and automakers would be willing to share that data with government transportation planners, the rollout of public charging stations could be more targeted and cash-efficient.'"
Given the current state of the US electrical grid, I'm not confident it would fare well against a sudden increase of large battery packs being plugged in at once. Yeah, we can setup delayed or offset charging times, etc. But I'm not sure lawmakers or even the utility executives have a good grip on this.
But that might be the plan. A brownout would drive demand for the government to invest in the grid. Maybe.
But I'm not in a position to run the number, so I could be full of shit.
Place nail here >+
Where do they think the power comes from? Those magic wall sockets most likely are connected to coal burning plants. There aren't enough sites for hydroelectric power to increase by a substantial amount, and solar and wind power aren't capable of supplying the "base curve" of the grid demand because of their unreliable nature. Either allow nuclear energy and/or fracking to supplement them, or STFU about renewable sources please.