There aren’t more electric cars because there’s no infrastructure, but there’s no infrastructure because there’s no demand. It’s this chicken-and-egg problem that Elon Musk is hoping to end, at least in China, after a signing a deal that’ll see Tesla open 400 charging stations in the country. The car maker has signed a deal with state-owned mobile network China Unicom, which’ll see the latter business providing space at its retail locations for Tesla owners to re-juice at. The pair aim to have stations with two or more charging points up and running in 20 cities by the end of the year, with 100 further cities coming on board in the future. Why would a national phone carrier get involved in the auto industry? Unicom executive Jiang Zhengxin believes that the team-up will allow “effective use of the infrastructure” plus, hey, it’s a nice bit of free publicity. Xinhua News, meanwhile, believes that the move will supercharge (pun intended) China’s push towards green vehicles as a solution to its pollution problem.
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Via: Reuters
Source: Xinhua News