Forums: Charging Station

Consumer Reports has painted an ugly picture of the Nissan Leaf, as did an early enthusiast based in Los Angeles, who described his frustrations with the heavily subsidized, all-electric car in a recent column. Now comes what must be the definitive example of the Leaf’s impracticality – this time from a (still) hard-core advocate, whose 180-mile Tennessee trek to visit family over the holidays required four lengthy stops to keep the vehicle moving. Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, set out from Knoxville on Monday with his wife and son, headed for the Nashville...

Duke Energy urges electric car owners to stop using charging stations after fireUpdated: 1:37 pm EST November 9, 2011 CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Duke Energy officials are asking customers who own the company's electric car charging stations to stop using the product after a house fire in Mooresville last month. A representative from the company has confirmed to Channel 9 that an email was sent to about 125 customers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Indiana who have the same type of charging station installed in their homes.

The U.S. Secret Service does more than protect Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — the agency also pays him rent. Since April, Mr. Biden has collected more than $13,000 from the agency charged with protecting him and his family, for use of a rental cottage adjacent to the waterfront home he owns in a Wilmington, Del., neighborhood. Mr. Biden, listed not as vice president in federal purchasing documents but as “vendor,” is eligible for up to $66,000 by the time the government contract expires in the fall of 2013, the records show. Officials say the arrangement came about when...

PARIS (AFP) – Charging electric cars at night eases a smog problem caused by fossil-fuel plants which provide the power for these vehicles, researchers reported on Tuesday. Plug-in cars are viewed as a key tool in the fight for a cleaner planet as they do not emit tailpipe pollution when they run on electricity. But they contribute indirectly to pollution, as well as global warming, if their electricity comes from a power station that runs on coal, oil or gas. In a study published in a British journal, scientists in the United States simulated the local impact from "plug-in hybrid...

It’s an exceedingly normal four-door that just happens to sever the umbilical cord that tethers our cars to a region of political instability, the Middle East. Even if net emissions were the same as a gas car’s — and they’re not — I’d rather send my money to a coal miner in West Virginia than to the sultan of Brunei or to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela...