Bay Area: “Electric-Car Capital”
Ironically, we recently reported on Portugal’s intent to invest in a huge amount of electronic fueling stations over the next few years, stating that they were well ahead of America. I say that this is ironic because of the following which comes out of mercurynews.com:
A Palo Alto start-up with powerful backing on Thursday unveiled an ambitious $1 billion plan to help make the Bay Area the nation’s electric-car capital.
Endorsed by all three of the Bay Area’s big city mayors, the plan would provide the re-charging infrastructure that must be in place before most consumers would consider buying or leasing an electric car.
Better Place, headed by former high-tech executive Shai Agassi, plans to install about 250,000 charging ports, 200 battery-exchange stations and a control center to service Bay Area electric car drivers. The goal is to have most of the system in place by 2012.
America needs to prepare for the emergence of alternative fuel vehicles, and it is no real surprise that California might be the starting point. It seems for all the political talk that very little has happened in terms of alternative fuel. It will be quite a wonderful sight to see new electronic fueling stations going up around the nation. We need this push into the future so we may better compete in the global economy in the near future.
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“America needs to prepare for the emergence of alternative fuel vehicles, and it is no real surprise that California might be the starting point” this is quite correct because if current demands for EV are anything to go by, there are going to be a lot more of these nifty vehicles out on the road in the near future. The recharge programs in Australia, Denmark, Portugal and Israel will also be very interesting to watch.
Zap,
Thanks for the comment. It is exciting to see progress towards alternative fuel vehicles. It seems like the US had dragged their feet so these changes are long overdue in my opinion.
We wouldn’t want to leave out the Do It Yourself (DIY) electric car users. They would need electric charging station to charge the EV batteries.
Removing the internal combustion engine and replacing it with a DC electric motor is not difficult. The most challenging part in owning an electric vehicle is the actual driving mileage per charge. It they can have access to the proposed charging station, it would definately increase the EV practicality.