Buying An Electric Car? You Might Want To Order Your Charging Station Now.
2010 will most likely go down as the year electric cars were (once again) made available to the public through Big Auto. Both Nissan and Chevy have plans to release the Leaf and Volt respectively — and both focus on getting energy from being plugged in. (Although the Volt can charge its battery utilizing its small “range-extender engine”, but then what’s the point of having an electric car?)
If you’ve got the deep pockets for one, the most conventional way of charging the vehicle will be to simply plug it into an ordinary wall socket. Charging a Nissan Leaf would take up to 16 hours, and charging a Volt would take eight. If you’re in a hurry, however, the best thing to have on-hand in the garage is a “quick charger” — which pushes a much more considerable amount of juice to your car. Instead of 8 hours, you can now have a fully charged Volt in under 2.5 hours.
Unfortunately, having a quick charger installed in your garage is not something just anyone can do. From CNN Money,
“The equipment has to be fully approved, installed by a competent professional, and in most cases, a city or state inspector will have to approve it all.”
In some instances, users had to jump through hoops that amounted to a month or more of waiting for the right installer/inspector to visit their home. “But the broader market of car buyers are likely to be turned off by any additional hassles”, said Charlie Vogelheim, executive editor of Intellichoice.com to CNN. “They all become detriments to making the sale,” he said. “That’s the type of thing that slows it down going into the mainstream.”
Companies like Nissan and Chevy are attempting to alleviate such potential issues by working with city and state governments now — so that later in 2010, when new customers attempt to order quick chargers and get them inspected, they’re not met with blank stares. As Sebastian Blanco, editor of Autobloggreen added, “Little setbacks will not be enough to hold back the tide of people who really want these cars.”
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