{"id":1269,"date":"2011-10-24T11:25:51","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T01:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=1269"},"modified":"2020-06-20T01:51:58","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T15:51:58","slug":"plugging-into-electric-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/home\/plugging-into-electric-cars\/","title":{"rendered":"Plugging Into Electric Cars"},"content":{"rendered":"

One thing that often gets raised as a problem when the issue of all-electric cars is discussed is the matter of \u201crefuelling\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy enough with hybrid cars<\/strong> such as the Toyota Prius and the hybrid Ford Focus \u2013 the battery that provides the force needed to get the wheels turning is recharged by the engine when it\u2019s running on petrol.\u00a0 But what about all-electric cars?\u00a0 The battery is always doing its thing and the motion of the car won\u2019t charge it up again (if only it did!).<\/p>\n

We all know how petrol-powered cars get refuelled.\u00a0 We all know where our local gas stations are and many of them double as corner stores and takeaway food outlets.\u00a0 In small towns, the petrol station often serves not just as the mechanic\u2019s headquarters but also the post office and the general store.\u00a0 But do these shops cater for electric cars?\u00a0 Your local petrol station probably doesn\u2019t have a place to plug in one of these.<\/p>\n

The obvious thing to do is to plug the car in at home and recharge it in the same way that you would recharge your cellphone or camera.\u00a0 So far, so good.\u00a0 You\u2019ll certainly notice the difference in your electricity bill, but this is only to be expected and you won\u2019t be forking out at the petrol station.\u00a0 But what about when you go on holiday or out of town on business?\u00a0 Now where are you going to plug in to recharge?\u00a0 Installing solar panels on the roof of your car so it can charge up as you go could be one option, especially in the more tropical and desert bits of Australia.\u00a0 However, people do need to and want to drive at night and in bad weather, for one thing, and nobody\u2019s taken a car covered with solar panels past the concept stage, at least so far.<\/p>\n

This issue is one that does get considered by those in places of power who want to encourage electric cars as a way of decreasing dependence on fossil fuels (However, it must be remembered that the electricity plant has to be run on something, and if the plant is run on petrol, oil or gas, electric cars aren\u2019t going to solve the problem of greenhouse gases and a non-renewable resource.\u00a0 Electric plants powered by wind, water, the sun or nuclear energy (which has its own issues) don\u2019t have this problem.)\u00a0 In the United States, grants<\/a> have been awarded to at least one organisation to develop the equivalent of a petrol station for electric cars: a plug-in station.<\/p>\n

Richmond, in Virginia, USA, is one recipient of one of these grants.\u00a0 The money will go towards working out how to build a charging station, as they are calling these facilities, and ultimately building them.\u00a0 It will also go towards educating mechanics, most of whom got their training on your good old standard internal combustion engine and aren\u2019t familiar with what\u2019s under the hood of a purely electric car.\u00a0 Things to be considered when designing a charging station will include how to make it straightforward to use for drivers, getting the station onto the grid, how not to cause brownouts if heaps of people charge up their cars, how to charge (in the payment sense) for the electricity and so forth.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first initiative taken regarding electric cars in Virginia.\u00a0 One power company, in an effort to get more people adopting electric and hybrid vehicles, introduced a special charging rate<\/a> for electricity for owners of electric cars, who paid less for their electricity if they wanted to charge up their cars overnight.<\/p>\n

  http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/kurs-cb.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One thing that often gets raised as a problem when the issue of all-electric cars is discussed is the matter of \u201crefuelling\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy enough with hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius and the hybrid Ford Focus \u2013 the battery that provides the force needed to get the wheels turning is recharged by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12409,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions\/12409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}