Home charging
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Among the 100,000 or so U.S. drivers with plug-in electric cars, it's widely noted that a lot of them charge their cars using photovoltaic solar arrays. But which comes first, using solar power or buying an electric car? Remember that environmental concerns are just one of several reasons to buy an electric car. Thus far, we've not seen any surveys that address which comes first, the plug-in car or the solar panels (hint, hint). But we do have a few data points showing the crossover between electric-car ownership and having solar power on your house. One set of figures comes from the...
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Home Depot To Refund Taxes To Electric-Car Charging Station Buyers
Many states offer discounts, rebates, and other incentives for the purchase of infrastructure improvements that encourage electric-car ownership. Washington is one such state, providing tax breaks on charging stations and similar EV-related devices. Unfortunately, Home Depot sales associates...
Richard Read -
Renault UK Offers Free Charging Stations With Zoe Electric Car
Renault's absence from North America means the Zoe electric car won't be reaching U.S. shores any time soon. And that's kind of a shame. It's about as chic as you'd expect for a car originating from France, and makes you wonder why some other companies can't put a bit of effort into styling their...
Antony Ingram -
EV Project Tells Us How Drivers Use Electric Cars
Just how do electric car owners use their cars? It's the question everyone is trying to answer, as it could shape how electric cars of the future are developed. Virtually every manufacturer with an electric car runs its own field trials or keeps data on its users' driving habits, but the EV Project...
Antony Ingram -
More Electric-Car Owners Install Home Charging Stations
More than anything else, one of the most appealing things about electric cars is being able to sit inside, every morning before going to work, to see a full battery gauge staring back at you. This isn't possible with internal combustion vehicles, because local planners get a little suspicious if...
Antony Ingram -
Reminder: Tax Credit For Electric-Car Charging Station Is Back
As part of the recent fiscal cliff deal passed by Congress, many green energy programs saw renewed focus and deadline extensions, allowing people to benefit from them for a little longer. Included in these programs is the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property credit. This allows eligible...
Antony Ingram -
The average household in America consumes more than 11,000 kWh of electricity per year, much of it during certain peak daytime hours. Many utility companies benefit from this by applying the law of supply and demand; as demand goes up, so do prices. Off-peak (late at night, for example), electricity is cheaper, but few take advantage of this. Now, automaker Ford wants to save consumers money by highlighting something it calls the “MyEnergi Lifestyle,” which blends a plug-in hybrid vehicle with household appliance upgrades and smart energy use. Drive a Ford C-MAX Energi plug-in...
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Pike's 10 Electric-Car Predictions For 2013: Right Or Wrong?
It is, as we've pointed out on many occasions, exceedingly difficult to predict exactly where the market for electric cars will go. Most are confident it will continue to grow, though the pace at which it does so is likely to be slow--a stark reality confirmed by virtually every electric...
Antony Ingram -
Texas Grid CEO: We Can Handle Electric Cars Just Fine
On the list of reasons to dislike electric cars, arguments about electricity grids being unable to cope with demand are often fairly near the top. You'll have heard it before: The concept that, as everyone drives home after work and plugs in their electric vehicle, electricity grids fail under the...
Antony Ingram -
Electric-Car Charging Stations Going In? Best Practices Guide Issued
For eco-minded commuters with electric cars, getting a place to charge their electric car while at work can effectively double their car’s daily range. Getting your employer to install a charging station can be far from easy, even if the company you work for is keen to support electric cars...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Electric Car + Solar Panels: Are They Right For You?
When it comes to service costs and fuel, everyone knows that electric cars are far cheaper to run than gasoline cars. Even with a plug-in car, however, you still have to pay your local utility company for the electricity used to charge it. Like gas prices, electricity prices are on a steady, upward...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Electric-Car Charging: Why Some Households Are Paying Too Much
Owners of plug-in vehicles like the Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Volt, and even the new Tesla Model S may be paying too much when they charge their car. Why? Because they haven’t signed up with the right utility plan. According to a recent survey from the California Center for Sustainable Energy...
Bengt Halvorson -
If you’re not an electric car driver, the chances are that how and when electric cars recharge is one of the lesser mysteries of the universe. After all, if every electric car in town charged at the same time, wouldn’t it bring down the electrical grid? The answer, at least for now, is a resounding no. But if electric cars take off, utility companies and electric automakers may have to work together to change the charging habits of electric car drivers to protect the gird. According to Scientific American, data collected over the past two months in Pecan Street, Mueller, TX...
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Does Your Utility Offer Electric Car Rates? Only 6 Percent Do
Compared with gasoline cars, electric cars are cheap to refuel, especially when charged at night using specialist electric car rates. Designed to encourage the charging of electric vehicles at night time when grid demand is naturally lower, electric car rates are substantially cheaper per...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Charging Your Electric Car At Home? You’re 20 Feet From Power (Probably)
While many car buyers today are interested in making the switch from gasoline to plug-in cars, they often worry that they have nowhere to charge it at night. That worry can lead to consumers ignoring plug-in options, but a new study from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (via...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Your Guide To Charging Station Rage, And How To Avoid It
A few weeks ago while borrowing a 2012 Ford Focus Electric, Forbes writer Todd Woody experienced what he described as Electric Car Road Rage: fear and anger associated with unsuccessfully trying to charge an electric car. It happened while he was at a cafe in downtown Berkeley, California, when the...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Landlords Vs Tenants With Electric Cars: The Latest Round
Garages in single-family homes are relatively easy to wire for electric-car charging; shared garages in multifamily residences often aren't. Therein lies much frustration, not only for plug-in car drivers but also their landlords. The latest episode hit the airwaves last Wednesday, when KGO-TV in...
John Voelcker -
DIY Guide Helps You Build Your Own Electric Car Charging Station
Over the past year, electric car charging stations have gone from being overpriced products with extortionate installation costs to items you can pick up at your local hardware store and install yourself. But if driving to your local Lowes and installing a pre-built unit seems a little easy or...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Ask any automaker, and they'll tell you they believe most early electric cars will be charged at night, in garages attached to private houses. That would seem to cut out residents of multiple dwellings, from rental apartments to condominium complexes. But electric car owners are resourceful; they'll find a way to charge using any available outlet. That was what Mike Nemat, a resident of the 160-unit South Keys condo complex in Ottawa, Ontario, did when he bought a 2012 Chevrolet Volt. He plugged his Volt into an outlet on the top floor of his garage each night, using (by his estimation) about...
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OnStar To Help 2012 Chevy Volts Charge When It’s Greenest
One of the biggest criticisms of electric cars is that they only move the pollution from the tailpipe of a car to the smoke stack of a power station. But a new application developed by General Motors' OnStar devision aims to help Chevrolet Volt owners charge their plug-in hybrid when it will have...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Polar CEO: Electric Car Owners Are Rich, Can Pay To Charge
Remember Polar Network, the U.K.-based charging network that costs electric car owners upwards of $30 a month to gain access to charging points? Previously, Polar’s sales director Neil Sharpe said that its level 2 charging stations were not designed to help electric car owners travel long...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Want A Tax Break On An Electric-Car Charging Station? Act Now!
For several years now, the Federal Government has offered tax credits to people buying brand new highway-capable electric cars, as well as those installing electric car charging stations. But while the $7,500 federal tax credits towards the purchase of an electric car most likely won't end for...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Better Place Electric Car Infrastructure Company Gets $200 Million Additional Funding
Better Place, charging infrastructure, battery leasing and global pioneer of rapid battery swap stations for electric cars, has just announced it has secured $200 Million of investment in its series C funding. Aiming to make electric car ownership and refueling as simple and as quick as refueling a...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Toyota Confirms Sub-$1000 Electric Vehicle Charger, Installation Included
Toyota has confirmed that its official charging station for the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid will be available to all customers, fully installed, for just $999.
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield