Soros fund management backs electric-vehicle charging startup
Why is this even a thing?<p>&lt;rant&gt;<p>Because the electric utilities don&#x27;t understand, and can&#x27;t&#x2F;won&#x27;t adapt to, the electrification of transportation.<p>BEVs from skateboard- to class 8 truck- size are<p>a) an unimaginably vast opportunity for electricity distributors. They&#x27;re going to get ALL THE GAS STATION BUSINESS in the next generation.<p>b) a time-shiftable load. For the BEV energy business to be viable at scale the time-shifting technology is mandatory.  They need smart ways to spread out the electric load. If every good doobie battery car owner says, &quot;I&#x27;ll tell mine to charge at midnight&quot; guess what happens when they all start drawing 8kW at midnight? The peaking generators have to kick on and the power gets really expensive.  And &quot;frequency control ancillary services?&quot; They get costly with sudden large loads.<p>Tesla&#x27;s already figured out a localized approach to the load-control: I now tell my car what time I need it rather than when to start charging, and it picks the time to start charging.   But for load-balancing work at scale is going to require, basically, real-time capacity auctioning.<p>In Norway, the electric utilities use the FM radio text channel (the one that announces songs on fancy radios) to announce current electricity rates, and their meters pick it up and use it.  That&#x27;s a start.<p>If the electricity distributors won&#x27;t build this smart grid, I guess third-party companies have to step into the breach.  It&#x27;s a lot of hands in the cookie jar.<p>&lt;&#x2F;rant&gt;