Driving electric cars is generally seen as the way of the future, but there are still problems associated with the technology. One of the biggest problems is the fact unless you only charge in your garage, you need to find charging stations.
For those who work at LinkedIn, however, charging an electric car just got a lot easier, with the company offering charging stations that have wheels and can come to the car, eliminating both the problem of charging stations having to be built in the first place and the problem of cars sitting at a station after being fully charged.
The charging station, called the Mobi Charger, is built by a startup in the Bay Area called Freewire, and looks like a food cart. It can charge a car in only 30 minutes, unless that car happens to be a Tesla, as it does not work with Tesla's proprietary plug. To work in the first place, the cart uses batteries from old electric cars. At the moment Freewire gets them from Nissan, however it is also in talks with BMW and GM.
The system is extremely easy to use for those that work at the LinkedIn campus in Mountain View, where the three-month pilot program that started this week is taking place. Once they park, they simply need to open an app, enter in their location and when they need their car charged, and everything else will be taken care of for them.
Freewire also offers a way to reuse batteries that don't have enough power to be used in a car but still have as much as 80 percent of their capacity. Making the system mobile means that Freewire can charge these batteries at night, when rates are low, and charge cars during the day.
Of course, Freewire still needs to offer the service at a rate that allows it to turn a profit. While it will save a lot of money on construction of charging stations, the stations still need a human attendant.
Freewire says it has other things in mind if it cannot sustain a business with mobile charging stations, which cost around $25,000 each. Instead, it says that it could recycle old batteries by replacing diesel generators at events. In fact, the company will help light up the Rose Bowl Stadium, after which it will also help power a Kenny Chesney concert. It might not be as interesting as powering cutting-edge electric cars, but it certainly is a step toward greener energy use as a whole.
Via: Wired
