Michel Jullian wrote:
A person driving a pure electric vehicle in the city who runs out
of power will be stranded.
Or maybe on the contrary unmanned slow recharging stations will be
ubiquitous because they require very little investment and real
estate compared to gas stations . . .
It is a little difficult to imagine how they would pay for
themselves, except as a means of attracting customers to places like
McDonald's, as I said. (Actually, someone else here suggested that
first.) Perhaps that would suffice.
I suppose if they were many of the stations at fast food restaurants,
shopping mall parking lots, public libraries and the like, a person
running low on power might have little trouble finding a place to
stop and recharge on the way home. If they were as ubiquitous as bank
automatic teller machines (ATMs) there will be little danger of being
stranded. The thing is, they would not be used as frequently as ATMs
are. Even if you charge a premium of several dollars to recharge at
one, I doubt that a stand-alone recharging machine would ever pay for itself.
Problems like this have a way of sorting themselves out. Our
ancestors would be astounded at how many gas stations there are. When
they first became widespread in the 1920s, magazines such as the New
Yorker often made fun of the trend.
Large capacity rapid-recharge stations on highways and busy urban
roads would make tons of money. Perhaps there would be enough of them
to avoid problems while traveling around urban areas. If there were
one rapid recharge station in every major highway exit in Atlanta, I
suppose I could go just about anywhere and be within a few miles of
one if the car ran low.
As I said, you would want a couple the system with a sophisticated
GPS navigation system. Even now, the Prius GPS guidance system can
tell you where the nearest gas station or hospital is. If you travel
in an electric vehicle and the charge falls to dangerously low
levels, the car will warn you and tell you where the nearest charging
station is. Or, if you inform car beforehand where you are going, the
car might tell you that you will need to recharge along the way, and
suggest several alternative recharging station locations and
itineraries. This would be particularly useful in the early days when
there are not many public recharging stations.
The Prius GPS turn-by-turn guidance system is superb, by the way. I
have no sense of direction and I get nervous when I am lost (which is
nearly always). But thanks to the GPS system I have successfully
driven to many new places with aplomb & panache. The computer has a
woman's voice. She sounds like a Midwestern schoolteacher with an
attitude, who takes no guff from students -- from you, the driver,
that is -- although in fact she will take any amount of guff without
losing her temper. I rode in a Japanese Toyota recently, in Tokyo,
which was equipped with the same kind of GPS system. It also has a
woman's voice, but she sounded like a mincing bubblegum-pop high
school girl, or one of these women who used to operate the automatic
elevators in Japanese department stores. The American voice commands
more respect and attention.
- Jed
- Re: "Fully Charged in About 8 Minutes" Jed Rothwell
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