So you are ready to put a down payment on that electric vehicle (EV) or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV). You have had it with the pollution and figure if enough people do as you are planning, there might be hope for this planet. BUT...What if all those other guys DO go out and get that EV or PHEV?
Where is everyone going to charge up?
Check out
A Better Place. They have big plans. They have a recharge unit that is growing in the popularity. It features a smart card billing convienience, but are being mysterious as to whose card or cards will work. This Silicon Valley start-up (SVSU) is using the units from
Coulomb Technologies, also a SVSU; but delivery dates remain at this writing undefined.
Are they waiting for the golden goose in the form of gigantic federal stimulus monies?
After all, President Obama has promised, right?
BUT...They are talking 10% of the planet's vehicles by 2020. Wholly unimpressive. A drop in the ocean to the growing threat to the atmosphere.
SO...That all aside, let's look at practical aspects.
First, where are you going to recharge if and when you exceed the limited range of that EV?
Some envision using your cell phone to call a service (or maybe
use Google Earth) to find the nearest facility. Cool.
BUT...
Will it tell you there is a place for you to recharge?
Will you have to wait or will you just place a placard in your window as is being suggested?
How is this gooing to work?
Or maybe some highways will have recharge "third rail" cables buried in the asphalt?
OR...
Well, duh.
Questions of convenience
will act on the marketplace.
It is so much easier to make a weekly ten to twenty minute stop at the gas pump than to remember to plug in the hybrid while you are wrestling groceries and the dog into the house. It seems a righteous cause, but the timetable, and the actual returns in the effort, in face of rising pollution from foreign nations, bring forth many "arguements of convenience" that are not being addressed.
(At least not anywhere I have have found.) Like with any innovation, this absence of obvious design solution will be rectified as time reveals further posterior pains.
It is the American Way.So, must we look around and find those locations that afford a measure of security (like the top floor of a parking structure), create a better service enitity, and give people something that is an improvement?
Otherwise, we are just replacing one set of problems with another whole set of problems.
Or, just maybe, will we be creating replacements for a few of those businesses that went down in face of the competition from WalMart or wilted and disappeared because of EPA storage tank removal and replacement costs. Let's hope, if the SBA gets involved as promised, that some of the funds will go to American citizens this time.
In a strange way, the present financial crisis will act as a buffer against hasty action. This is all about hope being attached to potential; which will probably go unfulfilled, as operating corporate giants bribe away the dreams of small successes.
There are hundreds of good ideas out there. There are good people with good intentions that will come forward with their version of how to solve our problems. Sorting them out will be either a task to challenge the wisdom of Solomon and Jobs best character trait, or they will certainly drown in the present morass of American political process.
Without calling for violent overthrow, it is time for revolution; that is, change that will take the money out of represeting the people
under actual threat of prison. It is time to seperate personal gain from greater social good without the stale solcialism dialogue. It is time for REAL, not radical. Decentralization will bring the greatest effort; as the many is seperated into few and come up with the width and breath of practical solution; from which the whole will benefit in this age of instant global communication.
