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Get the Facts Do Your Part
This is a core SixLinks guide
1000 Transportation points
by Jeff Gunther Guide: Charging Station in my community

Jeff's action: Charging Station in my community

Having a community committed to installing infrastructure to support plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles is very important to their acceptance. These will become much more popular as more people have plug-in vehicles, but having them in place also encourages people to get plug-in vehicles.
Step 1: Find out if your community has any charging stations read more
If it does, find out where they are. If they are in convenient places that would reasonably be used by people with plug-in hybrids or electric cars, congratulations, you're done, check off all the steps. If your community doesn't have any, or if you don't think the ones you do have would actually ever be used, continue on.
Completed on June 5, 2009 at 12:28 a.m.
Step 2: Find out if there is a demand read more
Try to find other people working on this issue. Try to discover if people in your community actually have vehicles that could be plugged in. You can try to find news stories about them or talk to sustainability groups. If there's no demand for charging stations yet, check back every 6 months or so. They are sure to become necessary as more vehicles are produced that can use them.
June 5, 2009
Hooray living in Portland!
June 12, 2009
Ok, so I've gone back and forth about this a bit. We have 4 in the area (3 in Portland, 1 in a suburb), but I can't decide if they are actually valuable or a publicity stunt for the electric company (who put them in). I have read that they may be putting more in at the Nike factory nearby, which would be great. I think I may have to see where they are on that project.
Kaitlyn Van Arsdell, June 12, 2009
Hear about battery-exchange vs. charging? Project Better Place
June 12, 2009
Yea, we actually go into it a bit in the Charging Stations section. I can't believe how ambitious Project Better Place is being. I really like their plan, but it's gonna be tough to get enough manufacturers to build cars to their battery specs I think. Very cool idea though. I'm excited to see how it works in Israel when they finish up there.
Kaitlyn Van Arsdell, June 12, 2009
Haha, if I could make hundreds of millions of dollars with a speech, I would be ambitious too...

If the question is whether they're useful for anything other than long trips, Israel was either a horrible or a brilliant place for them to start out... it's weird, everyone except the guy himself seems to see it as a highway-trip-only thing. He's the only one talking about urban networks. I even heard him talking about families using PBP for everyday, but keeping an oil-powered car for road trips.
June 13, 2009
I don't know too much about the background of the people or the company. What's the deal with the speech?

I like that Israel is doing it both because they are doing it, and because they are small enough to make it a country-wide thing, but large enough to actually make it a good test. It would be nicer to have like a US interstate-sort of project, because that is the beauty of the systems, but Israel seems like a good start, even if a lot of the original usage is charging stations and not swap stations (PBP does do both). If nothing else, getting the cars out there and some infrastructure in place would be good.
July 10, 2009
So I just found out that there are going to be a lot more charging stations going in the Portland area, in addition to those already here. They're even taking demand into account. So I'm going to check this off, since we have some and more are being installed in a reasonably way.
Completed on July 10, 2009 at 4:27 p.m.
Step 3: Get charging stations installed read more
Work with owners of these vehicles or on your own to contact local officials, utility companies, and companies that work to install these charging stations and get some installed. They should be in convenient places like parking lots of malls or in downtown areas.
Completed on July 10, 2009 at 4:27 p.m.
All Done!
Tomo Says:Great Job!
Updates and Comments: What is this?
The updates and comments below show how Jeff is doing in completing his action. You can leave him comments, suggestions and encouragement using the box below.
Tomo Says:Just who's behind SixLinks anyway? These guys. And me. And biscuits.
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