Shouldn't they be encouraging people to plug-in at home and at night when there is an abundance of electricity capacity rather than plugging in during the day when electricity and demand are high?

plugging in AT ANY TIME is better than paying some foreign country a major premium on a fuel whose by products are slowly killing us. the efficiency ratings and polution controls at the power plants are eons better than even what a Prius can do.

plus, as I well know, most EV's have major range issues... if plugging in at work allows one person to drive one. then its well worth the effort

Solar panels don't work at night.

I don't disagree, but I have to wonder if the money would be better spent elsewhere, such as getting gas guzzlers off the road, especially considering there are very few PHEV or EV vehicles on the road nationwide, let alone along I95 in Maryland and Virginia. Though the $2 million they're spending on this won't get them very far, it's a start.

If I had a PHEV or EV I would absolutely appreciate having "free" places to plug-in.

Which is why I'd rather see the $2m spend on solar panels TODAY where they can immediately start offsetting fossil fuel consumption and then looking for more money in 2010 when PHEV might start showing up no the road in numbers. You could even use the money you save on electricity by using solar to pay for the plug-in stations. Even if you split it between solar panels and plug-in stations, $1m will buy you a lot of solar panels.

A lot of people in the DC-metro area (including the suburbs) can't plug in at home, because they don't have single family homes with accessible outlets.

Also the article says this is one of the initiatives being considered. It's possible they will also be looking into efforts such as getting gas guzzlers off the road and solar energy.

having power stations to plug in only gives us more choices... that is all. trying to take gas guzzlers off the road reduces our choices and that will never work.

the ONLY thing that will work is to make EV's more attractive. prohibition did not work despite the fact that significantly less than 50% of people drank (yea, i found it hard to believe too) and the reason why is that it against human nature for us to obey... that is why we have laws. we need them because left to us, we would have chaos.

so all i would like to see is a tenth of the money placed on fossil fuels by publicly funded sources be put into the EV game....ok, that would be way too ambitious... make it a hundredth... that would be good for a start

Most everyone that responded to this prior to me is from a warmer climate. Did you know that many motels in the north country have plug-ins available for your EBH? (Check your AAA guide for "winter plug ins".) Granted this is not a public enterprise, but worth a mention.

Good grief folks, lack of changing stations is not a problem. Once there are PHEV/electric cars to be charged and money to be made from offering charging stations.....poof, problem solved.

If I can plug in at work then I only need an EV with 40km range but if I can only plug in at home I need an EV with 80km range which will be a lot heavier, more expensive to buy and use more power overall.
Even if I have an EV with an 80km range, topping up the charge from 40% to 80% during the day will increase the life of my batteries and at no additional energy consumption rather than charging once a day from 10% charged to 90% charged.