Gasgoo.com (Shanghai January 25) - In the opening year of the Twelfth Five-Year Guideline (2011-2015), Beijing continues to promote electric vehicles usage, with plans to promote individual sales of electric cars to 30,000 units by 2012, according to a report released by jinghua.cn. Additionally, the city plans to experiment on the use of solar and wind power for charging car batteries. The news comes as the city's CPC Committee Secretary Liu Qi and Mayor Guo Jinlong paid a visit to Hangtian Bridge's electric vehicle charging station, located in the west of Beijing.
In response to media doubts that electric vehicles are impractical, on-site technological staff demonstrated that an 8-ton sanitation truck could have its battery replaced in four minutes, while a 16-ton truck's could be replaced in just eight minutes. After being fitted with a fully charged battery, the trucks could be driven for 120km nonstop. The stations, located in Yuejialou, Yanqing, Datun, Hujia and 12 other locations, all use a plug-in style charging method, which can charge both cars with fixed batteries and those with removable ones. Batteries take six to eight hours to fully charge.
With accusations that charging batteries are wasteful and inconvenient, electric companies responded that the clean energy electric vehicles provide is the future direction for the industry. Additionally, in order to increase accessibility, the city hopes to install charging stations near bus stops and other related areas. Ideally residents would be able to set their vehicles at the charging station in the evening, and collect their fully-charged vehicle the next day.
