It's not miles per gallons but cents per mile.....

Plug-In Cars Are Almost Here, but Charging Stations Lag

edited By : Saudi Ali 22.10.2009

DETROIT — Even though several automakers plan to begin selling electric vehicles next year, their sales may be limited by the lack of a national infrastructure to support them, speakers at a conference here on plug-in cars said on Wednesday.

Utilities that serve most of the nation’s electricity customers said they were aware of the issue, and would take several steps, including working to help develope plans for charging stations, and would use battery-powered vehicles themselves.

Among the biggest challenges for automakers is overcoming consumers’ fears of becoming stranded with a dead battery — what the industry calls “range anxiety.”

“This isn’t just an experiment for us,” said William Clay Ford Jr., Ford Motor’s executive chairman. “We can provide the vehicles; we can provide the hardware. But we cannot unilaterally solve all of the national issues.”

Though automakers are testing numerous propulsion technologies, including hydrogen fuel cells, batteries are seen as the most promising near-term answer for reducing oil imports and emissions. President Obama has called for a million plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles to be on the nation’s highways by 2015.

To encourage adoption of electric vehicles, charging stations that follow a nationwide standard eventually will be needed at every shopping mall, parking garage and apartment building and at countless other locations, said Anthony F. Earley Jr., the chief executive of DTE Energy in Detroit.

“The beauty of electricity is it’s already there,” said Mr. Earley, who also is chairman of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents publicly traded utility companies in the United States. “If we change the building codes to say every time you build an apartment building, build in a charging station, that is not a large cost, as opposed to telling every gas station to put in a hydrogen tank just in case we might need hydrogen later on. So we’ve kind of got a jump-start.”

Among the issues that utilities hope to address are how to keep electric vehicles from overloading the electrical system, especially as their numbers grow.

“The last thing you want is millions of electric vehicles plugged in at 5 o’clock on a hot summer afternoon when the grid is already being taxed,” Mr. Earley said.

Ford is one of several carmakers with concrete plans for electric vehicles in the near future. It intends to start selling a battery-powered version of its Transit Connect commercial van next year, followed by an electric Ford Focus sedan in 2011 and other plug-in vehicles in later years.

Nissan is introducing its electric car, the Leaf, to businesses next year and to consumers by 2012. General Motors plans to sell its Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in vehicle with a range-extending gasoline engine, late next year.

Once an infrastructure starts to develop, electric vehicles are expected to grow in popularity — not just because of their environmental benefits, but also because they cost less to operate than a gas-powered vehicle.

“The price in the future is going to be cents per mile, said Tom Kuhn, the Edison Electric Institute’s president. “It’s not miles per gallon.”
Sign in to Recommend Next Article in Business (6 of 41) » A version of this article appeared in print on October 22, 2009, on page B6 of the New York edition.