One in six households can party like it's 1979 by purchasing a plug-in vehicle. Add a thumpin' sound system to that vehicle and you can celebrate by pumping out an appropriate hit from that year, too. We think Chic's Good Times would be appropriate.
The Land of 10,000 Lakes is now No. 1 when it comes to cutting electric-vehicle recharging rates. Minnesota has become the first state in the union to require investor-owned utilities to offer consumers discounted rates for EV charging during off-peak hours. You betcha.
Automakers are working with various electric utilities around the world to figure out how to best integrate vehicle with the grid. One of the requireents for the coming flood of plug-in cars is a way to smarten up the cars' energy use. A research team at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has developed a Smart Charger Controller that could eliminate the need for automakers to develop proprietary charging controllers in electric vehicles, whether BEVs or PHEVs.
