Open Source Electricity

No, there isn’t a campaign to socialize our high utility costs.

Instead, different strategies to deal with the issue of providing energy to the growing electric car market are being explored in different countries. Currently, in America, there are charge stations available in certain locations, but nothing designed to support a broad customer base. 

In Israel, the electric car market has been developing over the last few years (since 2008), and it looks like 2011 is the big debut as electric cars and chargers flood the Israeli market, intended to ultimately represent 30% of the market. They have met their deadline so far, and one of the pressing issues is how Israel, who depends a lot on burning coal and oil for energy, will be able to provide the energy for the vehicles to run and for society to continue to run smoothly. 

The proposed model is that the projected two million cars (yes million) will be connected to a grid and managed by shared software that will coordinate and manage recharging “without the addition of a single generator or transmission line.” How this will be accomplished is not specified but we can guess.

The Sad History of the Electric Car

Many people, (including myself) have been under the mistaken impression that electric cars are a new experimental development in the auto industry—a car of the future. However this is not the case. Electric cars have been around since 1835 when an American named Thomas Davenport created the world’s first small locomotive for public consumption. The first electric vehicle was an electric carriage created by a Scottish inventor named Robert Anderson, but it wasn’t very practical. The above photo is an ad for one of his later models—the Detroit Electric, with various models in production from 1907-1939. By this time (1859), rechargeable batteries had been developed. The first vehicles were not so practical as to be used on a regular basis, due to the need to replace the batteries after their energy was exhausted.