On June 17, 2010, in the WSJ appeared an article entitled "California's Costly Electric-Car Push" The thrust of the article is the question, "Will the customers buy E-cars and if so, under what conditions?"
California is funneling $200 million a year through 2015 into low-emission vehicles. As part of the plan it is subsidizing more than 5,000 charging stations that should be in operation by 2012, which is expected to be more than any other state.
California's goal is to have 7,500 all-electric and 25,000 plug-in hybrid cars on its roads by 2014, rising to 60,000 electrics and 85,000 plug-ins by 2017. The first models are expected to arrive this fall, 2010.
Two points are of significance to the writer. 1) They are concentrating on a so-called "Level II" station that offers 220 to 240 vac electricity, and which claims to charge cars in two to four hours. (see below). 2) Gasoline stations aren't considered good locations for charging point because charging takes a longer time than most people are willing to wait.
Hence their thrust is to locate charge station where people linger—restaurants, hotels, malls churches and entertainment venues. Another plan is to use "free-charging" as an inducement to hold the customer in the store while shopping for "high ticket" items
A number of companies are planning to offer charge station towers and one, Coulomb Technologies is promoting" card swipe" system for automatic billing on a monthly basis aka as your gas or electric bill is handled now. Also the charging control has an input of how many Kwh you wish to purchase.
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