Electric car charging stations to line NAFTA highway

Governments are teaming with commercial interests to line the Interstate-35 corridor with hundreds of charging stations for the expected coming flood of electric vehicles

DALLAS (Feb. 21, 2011) – It may have started in California, but Texas is emerging as the next hotbed to incubate the emerging electric vehicle craze.  It was recently reported that Austin will be installing hundreds of re-charging units around the city, and now governments up and down I-35 are planning to do the same.

The first meeting to plan for implementation is being held tomorrow in New Braunfels, Texas, and includes such organizations as Austin Energy, the Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative, with diverse organizations from Georgetown to San Antonio and beyond.  “We know that electric vehicles will enjoy faster penetration in the marketplace if it’s easy for customers to take their vehicles anywhere they want to within the corridor,” said Karl Rabago, VP of Distributed Services for Austin Energy.

With leadership from Texas, it is expected communities through the entire expanse of the NAFTA Highway will follow with their own recharging locations.

Since half the electricity in this country currently comes from coal, Rabago was asked if we really are just replacing dirty gasoline with dirty coal.  “Even running our electric vehicles on 100% coal, electricity produces better local environment benefits and better net efficiency than running it on gasoline,” said Rabago, who commented on the ScienceNews Radio Network program, the Promise of Tomorrow with Colonel Mason by phone from his office.  The program is now archived at the website for its world audience. 

On the program, Rabago said transforming our petro based vehicles to electrical accomplishes three things: improvement in emissions, allows us to make greater use of renewable energy, and “it migrates our economy to something that we can locally produce as opposed to being dependent upon imports from countries that sometimes are politically unstable and other times are downright hostile.”  And not to act, Rabago warned of a “darker scenario in which we are all stuck buying foreign oil and chocking on the exhaust.”

Rabago is one of three speakers from Austin Energy who will be making presentations on the subject at the Electric Vehicles and Personal Transportation workshop produced by IEEE-USA March 4, 8am- 5pm, in conjunction with their annual meeting, Engineering in Motion at the Renaissance Hotel, 9721 Arboretum Boulevard, Austin, Texas 78759.  The public is urged to attend and register at the website.