The use of the word "now" for a car that will be released in 2011 is strange.

Well, this is how I see it. They're starting to build the market now by working at putting in charges in anticipation of the cars to be sold in a few years. They're starting to build the infrastructure. And I'm sure the cars are already being tested in anticipation of a selling year of 2011. So I don't have a problem with now. It's more now than the Volt.

2011? Looks like GM has a 12 month jump on the market with their Volt car.
(rhetoric aside, I must concede that the cars will likely be sold to very different markets)

It is going to be VERY interesting to see how the quick charge versus the plug-in charge concepts battle it out.

I think they have already failed if the need 'charging stations'. I presume they are talking about something similar to the high voltage stations that were scattered about in the late 90s. What happens if there are more EVs at a particular place than there are special charging station outlets? Don't happen to work near one? To bad, push your car home and charge it there with the home charging station option you bought with the car.

If they can do it by charging from a regular outlet they could do well. In that case, 'charging stations' could be created easily and cheaply wherever they are needed as the number of cars on the road increases in an area.

Things are happening very quickly in the car industry. Not quickly enough.

IMHO starting with the charging infrastructure is part of what killed the EV movement in the US 10 years ago. How about starting with large scale production of moderately ranged, moderately priced, attractive, reasonably sized cars that you charge at home. Knock out 50-90% of peoples driving, then worry about how to get rid of the other 10-50% with long range, charging infrastructure etc. Putting millions of dollars into infrastructure years before anyone gets any benefit out of it, combined with the arguments that its ineffective and unneeded gave a lot of ammo to the ney-sayers. One of the reason I like PHEVs in the short run. No expectation of huge electric range keeps battery cost reasonable and infrastructure investment at 0. In the mean time, most people will spend a lot of time driving around on electric power without feeling like they are driving an electric car.

You might be correct about GM if the Volt was an EV. There are obviously some overlap, but there are significant challenges to the application of that technology to a true BEV. Whats good for a hybrid or even plugin hybrid battery is not necessarily good for BEVs. Most all their battery knowledge is coming from third parties rather than internal knowledge anyway. At least their serial configuration does give them a little more direct applicability to the EV drive line. As it is they took their 10 year head start on EVs and turned it into a 10 year lag on HEVs. Maybe they can catch up on PHEVs, but to assume Toyota (and others) hasn't been working on them for years just because they don't put out a press release on it every week would be foolish.

Rob