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"Where to Recharge Your Electric Cars"?

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A Tesla Model S slowly moved into one of the two special parking lots with Tesla’s chargers on the underground parking of Yintai Center, Beijing. These are the only two chargers of Tesla in the business circle of Chang’an Street, Beijing. The figure on these two chargers shows that 46 cars came here for recharging from June 27 to September 9.

The small number of Tesla’s chargers in one of the busiest business circles in China represents a problem for Tesla and its users in China: where to recharge their cars?

The electricity-driven Model S of Tesla has proven to be very popular in the world. The British are fond of this car very much. However, different from China, Tesla does not meet any charging-related problems in this country. Gloria Esposito, director of “British Low Carbon Car Partner” program, say that the development of electric cars includes a complete set of supporting devices such as the chargers. These devices are not only available in houses, but also in the public place. The lack of these devices is one of the major obstructions for the development of electric cars.

The British government is thinking of setting up chargers in all its cities.

The Problem of Recharging

“Tesla’s efforts in the car design and the construction of fast charger have piqued the interest of consumers. This is good for having more people embrace the ideas of electric cars,” Esposito says. The“British Low Carbon Car Partner” program where she is serving is a think tank offering ideas and advices for the British government in the low-carbon transportation. It is dedicated to the enhancement of interested parties, helping them develop the low-carbon car and fuel market. It could also exert its influence over the policy.

In September, she came to Beijing to join a seminar held by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technologies and National Development and Reform Commission with the focus on the present and future standard formation of lowemission cars and fuels, industrial outlook, technological access to the standard and governmental subsidies. Meanwhile, she also shared the successful experiences of Great Britain in policies and industry.

In China, the unavailability of chargers for Tesla cars has greatly reduced the practicability of this car and even “downgraded” the cars to be “costly scrap iron”.

Some analysts believe that the sales volume of electric cars is still rather small compared with the total sales volume of passenger cars and the lack of infrastructure is an important reason. Without enough service centers and chargers, Tesla had to delay the date of delivering its products to the customers in other cities other than Beijing and Shanghai. A user in Inner Mongolia was angered by the late-coming car and broke the front windshield of his Tesla Model S after receiving it. A businessman in Guangzhou went to Beijing to take his Model S and planned to drive back to his home city. However, during the 2000km journey he did not find enough chargers for Model S, so he had to spend additional 100 thousand yuan buying 20 chargers, installed them in the ho-tels he lived during the journey and set up compatible sockets, not only for the sake of himself, but also for the convenience of all electric car users.

On June 11, China Yintai Investment Co., Ltd (Yintai Group) announced the program of “destinations for recharging”with Tesla. With the program two parking lots in the underground parking of Yintai Center were installed with Telsa chargers to provide the users with free recharging service. An anonymous worker in this parking says that sometimes a queue of cars are waiting for the empty slots of the parking lots. He and his colleagues are assigned to instruct the users about how to use the charges. They would open the recharging box, switch on the electric source, hand the cables to car owners and let the owners recharge their cars on their own.

Yintai Group is the first commercial property partner of Tesla in the construction of charger network in China. This program is a part of Tesla’s project of expanding the network of chargers in cities of the world along with its increasing sales.

It is known that the Tesla chargers in Yintai Center could only work with Tesla’s cars and is not compatible with other brands of electric cars.

Pivotal Governmental Role

The British government is thinking of setting up chargers in every city of Great Britain. According to Esposito, London has won the funds from the British government for the construction of various types basic charging devices to help people set up chargers in their own garages and the commercial organizations build chargers in the business sites. The fund is also used to build recharging devices in the streets and other public areas.

Compared with London, people in Beijing find it hard to find a fitting charger for their Model S apart from their houses.

The chargers in the public areas of London adopt the state-of-art recharging technologies, which could fully charge a car within 30 minutes, much shorter than the 7-hour charging period at home. The London government is formulating the relevant policies which require the newlybuilt apartments, commercial property and public buildings to have the electric car chargers put into the design and planning. Meanwhile, the think tank Esposito works for is also studying into a plan to decide where the chargers are located could bring the biggest benefits to the users. The ultimate goal is to lower the cost of building chargers as much as possible and making them as user-friendly as possible.

The British government launched the “Intersection Point” program in 2013, which enlisted 8 places as the pilot areas. 30 million pounds were invested to accelerate the construction of recharging devices. The British government promises the funding support accounting for 50% of the construction cost of chargers in public areas and 75 of the cost of chargers in houses or commercial property. With that great plan, 5,500 chargers had been built in the eight pilot areas by June 2013.

In addition, as Esposito has said, the British government is going to spend another 500 million pounds from 2015 to 2020 supporting the development of lowcarbon cars. 50 million of the fund is going to be used to build the infrastructure. In London, 500 fast chargers are going to be built along with 15-30 thousand inhouse and public chargers. In addition, each city of Great Britain has their own funding plan based on their financial strength to formulate matching strategies and development plans.

In her opinion, the government plays an important role in the development of electric cars. The measures include the monetary support for construction of devices, encouraging local governments, public departments and commercial operators to build the chargers. In addition, the government could exempt the electric cars from the parking fees, lower or completely cancel the annual inspection of cars and provide other favorable conditions for users of electric cars. These could persuade more people to choose the more environment-friendly and economical electrical cars.

No Waste in Building Chargers Aimlessly

Wang Tao, a fellow with the Tsinghua-Carnegie Global Policy Center, says that the lack of chargers for the public use is indeed a factor restraining the development of private electric car market. But he stressed that this would not be the only and most important reason for the slow development of electric cars.

The current technologies, as Wang Tao points out, render the electric car batteries quite time-consuming in recharging and unable to be durable for very long. These defects make the electric cars only able to be used as commuting cars, or more simply, a good choice for rich families as their second car. The simple increase of chargers is not enough a reason for consumers to turn to electric cars, especially when there are not enough household parking lots.

Therefore, the electric cars are presently more suitable to be used in the public sector, such as the buses, taxis, governmental cars and so on. These departments have the conditions to build their own recharging devices and are much less exposed to defect of current battery technologies. This needs the government to provide more support in not only the purchasing, but also the use of electric cars.

Then, as for who should/can be responsible for the construction and improvement of chargers for electric cars, the pattern might vary to countries, but one thing is certain: this needs the collective involvement of government, developers, electric car makers and consumers.

As Esposito says, it is very important to have a group of partners with different functions and roles to develop the electric car market. The government, enterprises, energy and power suppliers should be parts of this. The system could only work with all-round participation and function. At last, she stresses that the electric power industry should be powerful and environment-friendly enough to accommodate the recharging devices.

Wang Tao also believes that the chargers in a country should be highly universal and compatible with all kinds of electric cars without any violations of the national standards. With that precondition, any individual and organization should be allowed to build the chargers.