As car manufacturers gear up for the race towards an electric motoring future, there is likewise a growing concern on how to charge the electric vehicle that one will purchase. Think about it: you buy an electric vehicle to try and lessen air pollution. Great. The problem is, how do you fill up? In this case, how do you recharge the battery?
While battery charging isn’t exactly a problem when tooling about within city limits, what about those times when you’d want to go on a road trip, for instance? Are you really confined to using your gasoline-powered car? Not if this consortium of automakers can have a say. The BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford Motor Company, and Volkswagen’s Audi and Porsche recently announced that they will be working on setting up combined Charging Stations along major highways in and around Europe.
The charging station network will have an initial 400 outlets spread out across Europe beginning in 2017. This number is expected to grow to reach the thousands by the year 2020. This is in conjunction with the planned roll-out of various EVs from these very same manufacturers, as well as their other industry counterparts. This move will hopefully entice many buyers to go electric and forego the use of their internal combustion engine-equipped vehicles.
While most EVs are limited to short-range travel, these limitations need not be a constraint anymore. With a slew of charging stations set to sprout up across Europe, topping up that battery can be as easy as filling up a fuel-powered car at a regular gas station. And hopefully, the charging station fever will spread to other parts of the world as well.
