Apartment Dwellers and Electric Cars
We agree that the plug-in electric vehicle seems like a great idea. The concept works well for homeowners, who can plug their electric vehicles into their home outlets and pay the electric bill increases that occur.
A problem arises when we consider the fact that only about 60% of residences are detached single family houses, and about 30% are apartments. The final 10% or so are mobile homes.
People living in apartments will have a problem with PHEVs. Where will the cars get plugged in and who will pay the bills?
Many apartment complexes for example have outdoor strip lots, with no accessible outlets. Similarly, people who wish to charge their cars up after getting to their workplaces will run into similar problems.
Clearly there will have to be new approaches and infrastructure to accommodate widespread electric car adoption, and we have to begin the discussion and debate now ahead of time.
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3 Responses to “Apartment Dwellers and Electric Cars”
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March 13th, 2007 at 8:41 am
This promise of these cars is huge and the sway electric utilities has to assist large autmoakers in bringing them to market is tremendous. While it may be 20 years before it’s a technology fully implemented I am looking forward to that day! For more on this technology called Vehicle to Grid, or V2G, listen to my two part series….
http://www.podtech.net/nextgear/technology/1697/vehicle-to-grid-part-1
http://www.podtech.net/nextgear/technology/1698/vehicle-to-grid-part-2
March 13th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
This is a very important point in regards to electric vehicles, and personally I feel like it could take as long as 100 years complete the proper infrastructure for electric vehicles.
There are a number of approaches you can take in dealing with this issue, the most obvious being to push for more public transportation. Take for instance New York, London, and Moscow. In all three cities public transportation is fast and accessible, so much so that cars are really not necessary if you live in the city.
There are always technological approaches to dealing with these problems as well. Solar panels on cars, swappable batteries, or even storing energy in rechargeable hydraulic pumps. Any number of things could be used to deal with this problem.
I think a big issue that also ties into problems with infrastructure is the demand that we will have with everything running on electricity. I think the biggest immediate issue that we have to deal with is the rising demand for electricity and how exactly we are going to meet it. I feel like a lot more time and money needs to be invested into securing our future supply of electricity, such that this electric society could be possible.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
in other words we may as well invest in public transit other than creating all that infrastructure….good point.
Btw, seems that North America did a good job destroying a perfectly good thing. In Toronto area we have a number of what used to be railways to small towns. Now these act as bicycling trails (nice ones at that :)). It is quite mind boggling to think that some time in the PAST one could take a train to a tiny place called Uxbridge
In Moscow area there’s a network of commuter trains that is extensive and usable. You can spend as long as 2 hours (perhas more, never gone that far) on a train like that. Coincidentally the trains are electric