I'm out of juice, bring me some batteries!

While unveiling an all electric Fedex test vehicle, I wrote a few months back on the subject of a standardized battery configuration for the coming influx of totally electric vehicles. The infrastructure and time logistics of getting batteries charged just seems to be a non-starter for me. I can easily imagine the benefit of my daily commute to and from work using an electric vehicle (especially if I have a free charging station at work), but what can I do if I want to go on vacation? What if I need to run several errands and accidentally run over my allotted mileage? What if I forget to plug in the vehicle and don't notice until I get in to go to work the next morning? An eight hour charging cycle will just not work. This article from Reuters explores many of these issues and highlights several companies who are jumping at the chance to become solutions to what will be a very large issue within the next few years. It will be an interesting news story to follow. Keep in touch...

Stealth Fedex Truck

Fedex is testing a few all electric vehicles for delivering their packages. Chevy and Nissan have new electric vehicles coming out soon. I believe it would do all of us some good to come up with a few standardized battery designs for engineers / designers to work with. Working at an auto parts company I can forsee the problems of trying to stock batteries for all of these vehicles that only fit one vehicle, for one year, etc. I am still waiting for someone to step up and release the Zero Point Module from Stargate Atlantis!