Another important piece of infrastructure required to make electric cars widespread is so-called smart-charging technology.
General Motors and smart-grid start-up GridPoint on Wednesday demonstrated an application in which a utility can remotely change the charge rate and other variables of electric cars plugged into the grid.
In this demonstration, people from GridPoint dialed into General Motors' Volt lab in Michigan and changed the charge rate to 1,200 watts.
This sort of remote control is considered vital because it will allow utilities to even out the load on the grid and potentially avoid having to build more power plants, or bring dirty auxiliary plants online, to meet demand for electric cars.
GridPoint is also developing technology that will eventually allow utilities to draw on stand-by power stored in many cars' batteries.
More ZDNet Photo Galleries
Popular Sanity Saver Videos
