'Petro Metro' Houston sets up for EV influx

The United States has always been the spiritual home of the private car, few of its cities more so than Houston, Texas, aka the Petro Metro.

A survey last year revealed that 75 per cent of commuters in Houston get to and from work by car, a hefty proportion of them travelling alone. Now, with fossil power becoming increasingly antisocial, especially in the four-wheeled acreages so favoured by Texans, Houston looks set to make the leap not into massive spending on public transport infrastructure, but into EVs.

Local authorities have already started signing deals, first up as a signatory to the C40 Electric Vehicle Network -- an initiative out of the Copenhagen summit that saw 15 cities commit to fast-tracking the setup of EV infrastructure during 2010. Houston has signed a deal with Nissan and power provider Reliant to start installing a network of public charge stations to make cars like Nissan's Leaf and Mitsubishi's i-MiEV (pictured) practicable for the daily commute.

The rationale extends beyond concern for the environment. An EV industry is the best thing imaginable to reinvigorate a moribund energy industry, according to a recent Reuters report. With Houston's 4.5 million vehicles putting in more than 120 million km, even a small shift to EVs would provide a substantial fillip for power utilities who've seen a five percent drop in demand over the last two years with the GFC.

US utilities are required by legislation to have the capacity on hand to meet peak demand levels at all times, so they have a fair amount of unsold stock hanging around. "What a salvation the electric car revolution would be for generators that are well below their capacity margins and trying to figure out how to make money," one executive told Reuters.

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