How exactly?
People who live in cities (including me) are an obvious market for electric cars. Short journeys and stop start traffic (and congestion charging) play to an electric car's strengths.
However, like most people who live in cities (at least European ones), I have to park my car on the street. And not 'on the street outside', but more 'on the street, somewhere near' my house. Even if I could regularly park right outside where I live, I'd have to somehow run a charging cable across the pavement to reach my car.
So, the only solution for cities is to have some kind public charging infrastructure, but what would that look like? I've heard suggestions that charging points be added to street lights, which is fine on the face of it, but on my road there's about ten cars for every street light, and probably double that further up the road.
So you'd need to add more charging stations, and to get past the aforementioned 'charging cables across the pavement' problem, they'd have to be by the kerb. However, not all cars are the same size, so depending on who'd parked where, you might have to stretch a cable quite a way to reach your car, and if you're unlucky, the charging post will block one of your doors.
Honestly, I've no idea what the solution is. I guess it will have to involve a (gradual) shift in attitudes towards car ownership, with less people owning their own cars. I could live without mine, but I've owned a car for more than half my life now, and I don't want to have to deal with the loss of the feeling of freedom that it gives me.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
