Car-sharing and Electric Vehicles

I want to call readers’ attention to the whole car-sharing phenomenon – particularly as it applies to the deployment of electric vehicles, and this excellent article that tackles some of the issues.

There is no doubt that car-sharing in dense urban environments like Boston and San Francisco is going to do quite well. I only wish that it existed when I lived in Washington DC in the 1970s, and spent half my life trying to find a parking space into which to shoehorn my car.

While there is a natural fit for EVs in the car-sharing space (as some of the motivation for not owning a car is eco-friendliness), there are significant problems associated with charging. Unlike filling up one’s car with gas, charging takes time, thus disabling the car from the network for hours at a time. While the EV owner can simply charge at home every night, this is tricky in the car-sharing environment.

I’m afraid this may be one of these ideas that sounds good on paper, but may prove tricky in the real world, given the charging infrastructure that exists here and now. Good article though; I hope you’ll check it out.