[citation][nom]mlopinto2k1[/nom]All I am saying is I don't think we need "charging stations" on street corners. Every single person, almost everywhere can have electricity in their homes. To ME, the idea behind "going green" means not having to rely on some BIG NAME COMPANY supplying the means to plug my car in. Charging a battery is not some super complex process that requires digital displays. It can be done easily at your home. But I also realize that long distance trips would not be feasible with a "charging station". So.. whatever. Just not on every damn street corner.[/citation]
What the heck? Standardization is all around you and is hardly 'the man' sticking it to you it part of a grand scheme to conquer the planet, put the tin foil hat away. Your 120V AC 60Hz (or whatever you have in your country) plug is standardized, your gas station nozzle is standardized (mostly to prevent people from putting diesel, which has a different standard, in their gasoline engines). Your light bulb has a standardized socket, your computer has IEEE standardized connectors. Not having a standard makes development a hell of a lot harder, and makes it significantly less convenient for end users. One of the biggest hurdles for alternative cars (aside from the whole gasoline being an extremely compact and light source of energy - which is the #1 issue) is the total lack of a standard for charging or even what the alternative power source will be.
Let's say you want to develop an electric car because a new magic battery has been developed that puts electric way ahead of the other technologies (fuel cell, L/CNG, hydrogen) and you want to sell it to the masses. Well, first problem, what voltage do you want to use and what's the amperage requirement? What's the standard voltage offered in the countries you want to sell to? What's the connector do you want to use? Flat blade, twist-lock, break away, some custom dealie? What charge time do you want? These are just a few of the dozens of questions you need to consider that can be dealt with rather easily by just having an industrial standard that you can build around as a starting point. Without a standard, it significant increases the risk you'll design your system around the wrong parameters and get screwed with additional redesign costs when a standard is finally chosen. That risk of not having a standard makes new technology business models less appealing to investors.
This is also not to mention other entrepreneurs who want to make money off selling charging station access to electric car drivers. Without a standard, what plugs do you put on your station, what voltage, what amperage? If Toyota uses plug A, Ford uses plug B, and GM uses plug C, what % of each type of plug do you make available? What does the long term trend look like its going towards? These uncertainties make securing capital considerably more difficult. I can only imagine how irked people who dropped 300$ on an HD-DVD (or Beta or mini-disc) let alone people who drop a couple million on the wrong charging station business.
It's a lot easier to design a car and an infrastructure if Bob's Charger Station 7000 is the standard that everyone uses. It then becomes Bob's responsibility to develop a standardized charger that converts each country's frequency and voltage into the standardized 87Hz 327V NEMA plug 47BN.525 that all the electric cars use.
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