Friday, November 14, 2008

Once you can charge up your ride anywhere, what happens?


There's an interesting line in a recent TIME magazine piece about a guy who's enjoying his new Vectrix scooter. Here it is:

Once you start looking, you find plugs everywhere," says [James] Morrison, who charges his two-wheeler at parking garages, outside Starbucks stores and even in gas-station parking lots.

Even though utilities are doing a lot of work on the smart grid, it'll take years, and this presents quite a window for people with plug in vehicles. If you've got the money for an EV today, you can afford the juice to move it, but that line made me think of a few questions for our readers:

Will property owners need to start locking up their plugs to stop EV leeches? Do you think businesses might start advertising "free electricity while you shop" offers to EV drivers? Would you plug your EV into any outlet you could find, just to drive for free or would you talk to the shop owner about paying a few bucks to plug in for an hour or three?

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