/CreditPhilip Cheung for The New York Times
By Ivan Penn | The New York Times
You’ve heard it many times, from automakers, the energy industry and government officials: Electric vehicles are the cars of the future, essential to the fight against climate change.
Yet that grand vision may founder on something most drivers take for granted: the pit stop.
Most electric cars need to be plugged in after they’ve traveled 200 to 250 miles — a much shorter distance than similarly sized gasoline vehicles can run on a full tank — and charging them can take an hour or more.
What’s more, chargers are often missing in the places where people need them — like the parking lots and garages of apartment buildings, where residents have had to go to great lengths to top up their car batteries, even dangling extension cords from their balconies.
Changing consumer habits is difficult in the best of circumstances, but it is much harder when a new technology makes it less convenient to use something as essential as your car.
