Cities or parking garage operators buying dozens

cities or parking garage operators buying dozens or more to accommodate what are hoped to be growing numbers of electric-car drivers. Just as soon as there are some electric cars, of course. That is, non-Tesla, more-or-less-affordable electrics such as the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, both due late this year. Home chargers are coming as quickly as a month later, GE says, and should be priced about $1,000 to $1,500, plus installation.

Michael Mahan, GE’s charger boss, says studies show the global demand for such chargers should top 1.6 million a year by 2015. He says GE knows there’s a chicken-and-egg argument — cars first? charging systems first? — but the company believes “if you put the infrastructure in, the vehicle adoption goes up dramatically”

The public chargers are operated with the swipe of a credit card. They will not be able to send the car batteries’ juice back onto the electricity grid. Utility companies want that feature so they can tap the stored energy, once there are large numbers of battery cars, as a hedge against brownouts.

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