Electric-car charging stations on the way for Europe
Tuesday, 26 May 2009 10:26
Design details have been finalised for the European electric-car plug standard which will allow for public and private charging stations to be constructed in cities preparing to support large numbers of the new vehicles. In particular, London Mayor Boris Johnson announced plans last month to make his city the electric vehicle capital of Europe by rolling out 25 000 charging points in the city by 2015.
There are currently two main electric car plug standards being developed, one in Europe and one in the United States. The seven-pin European plug is endorsed by Volkswagen, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Fiat, Toyota and Mitsubushi. It will include a ‘plug present’ contact that immobilises the connected car to prevent it being driven while the cable is attached, and a ‘control pilot’ pin that exchanges data such as battery status information between the charging station and the vehicle.
Different charging points will be able to charge car’s batteries at different rates, depending on the current they draw from the electricity grid. Slow points will take several hours, fast points will take around 30 minutes and rapid charge points will be able to charge a car in about five minutes.
But all of this is very expensive, especially as a large part of the costs are still related to research and development of technology. In London, a third of the infrastructure is to be funded by the City of London, with the UK government and various partnerships funding the rest. Johnson has also proposed a regulation that all new building developments install charging points. In order to encourage the use of electric vehicles, £250m will be spent on tax and other incentives to vehicle owners.
But the massive political push behind electric cars is meeting with some resistance. An academic article published last week in Research Fortnight by head of the UK’s Royal Chemistry Society Richard Pike points out that electric cars will save an insignificantly small proportion of the country’s carbon emissions, yet will cost a third of the annual budget of its science and engineering funding council.
Although electric cars are three or four times more energy-efficient than cars, this doesn’t take into account the fact that most electricity comes from power stations where only 36% of energy available in fuel is delivered into electricity, and huge amounts of carbon dioxide are released. Pike also points out that if electricity was taxed as much as petrol is, electric cars would be much more expensive than they already are.
