High-Speed Electric Car Chargers to Link San Diego, SF, Portland - SFGate
Despite their rising popularity, most electric cars aren’t considered road-trip material.
Their limited battery range means that long-distance travel must be carefully planned, with charging stations along the route mapped out in advance. Wing it, and risk running out of juice in the middle of nowhere. And most charging stations aren’t all that fast, meaning long trips contain lots of downtime.
Now BMW, Volkswagen and an electric vehicle charging company based in the Bay Area want to change that.
The two German automakers have teamed with ChargePoint of Campbell to install networks of high-speed chargers along two interstate corridors. One will link San Diego with Portland, Ore. The other will stretch from Washington, D.C. to Boston.
Both networks should be up and running by the end of the year. The three companies announced the project — which they will jointly fund — at the 2015 Washington Auto Show on Thursday.
The chargers will be quick — capable of restoring 80 percent of the charge in a BMW i3 or Volkswagen e-Golf in 30 minutes or less. They will be spaced no more than 50 miles apart, to ensure that drivers don’t get stranded on the roadside.
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