By Chris Scott Barr

Let’s say that you’ve gotten yourself a shiny new electric car, and are taking it for a trip across a few states. Instead of planning the shortest route like you would on most trips, you instead have to plot out locations where you’ll be able to add some juice to your ride. That’s right, the downside to having a car that doesn’t rely on gasoline is finding somewhere to charge it up. Well it would seem that there is an app designed to help solve that problem.

PlugShare is an iPhone app that allows people to specify that they are willing to let people charge up at their location. Since public charging stations are few and far between, this could be a good solution. Anyone can sign up and let people power a car at their house, or even business. If you’re wanting to help out the EV community, feel free to sign up. Who knows, maybe you’ll need to plug in your car at someone’s house in the future, so why not do the same for someone else?

[ PlugShare ] VIA [ Dvice ]

By Chris Scott Barr

If you’re one of the few people that actually owns an electric car, you might be wondering where you can charge it, when not at home. Well next spring you might not need to look any further than your local Best Buy store. The company has announced that 12 of its locations will have Blink EV charging stations installed by next March.

Tucson, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle are the five lucky cities that get to test out this idea. If people actually start using them, Best Buy will consider expanding the program to more stores. You have to admit, this is a pretty great idea. If people are waiting for their cars to charge, they’re probably just going to poke around Best Buy and eventually buy things. I wonder how many years it will be before these kinds of charging stations show up in all large cities.

[ ECOtality ] VIA [ Dvice ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Next year those people anxiously awaiting the new Chevy Volt will finally get their hands on it (barring any delays). In addition to having an awesome electric car, they’ll also have a cool way to interact with it remotely. That’s right, iPhone and Blackberry users will have the ability to link up with their car using their phone of choice.

So far it seems that the only current features will be controlling when the Volt is charged, and being able to tell just how much juice it has at any given time. Seeing that they still have a long time before the car is due out (currently late 2010), we should hopefully see more features added to the phone apps.

[ GM-Volt ] VIA [ Dvice ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Electric cars aren’t exactly the most popular form of transportation out there. Thus the number of public charging stations are few and far between. One unlikely company is jumping on the bandwagon and installing charging stations at  6 of their locations.

Starting in Cary North Carolina, McDonald’s will offer ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations. In some ways this seems like an odd company to step forward. I don’t generally stay at a McDonald’s for more than 15-20 minutes, so most people wouldn’t get very much of a charge. Still, I suppose every station helps.

VIA [ NovaCharge ]

By Jonathan Kimak

Slovak designer Matúš Procháczka came up with this concept for a car powered by magnets. The MAG would require all roads to be made out of giant magnets, which is something that would be very expensive and logistically difficult to implement. If the road did have the magnets then the magnetic force between the road and the magnets in the car would push the car up from the road and reduce the effective weight of the car by 50%. The car also has a polarized electric battery powered engine.

The concept car won the unseen technology award at the Interior motives design award for 2007.

I wonder how many people would want to drive around in a cross between a slipper and a high heeled shoe.

[ The Design Blog ] VIA [ Tuvie ]