Big Money has an interesting thought piece around the subtle societal shifts that will develop around electric car charging stations. As hybrids and eventually full electric vehicles increasingly become the norm within our (mostly) car-reliant culture, infrastructure will have to be developed to support this change. Eventually, we will reach a tipping point where traditional gas stations will give way to fast car charging stations (locations that can charge a car in 15 minutes as opposed to home outlets that may take several hours), but this transition won’t happen over night.

Which is to say we can’t simply replace one with the other. On top of this, the average charging time, is almost three times as long as traditional fueling, a fact that needs to be taken into consideration when thinking about managing turnover and building in efficiencies.

The article argues and I would agree, that this new space and additional time constraint (not to mention the potential for receiving government funding) represents a real opportunity for existing businesses to leverage this captive audience. As the author notes, 15 minutes is an odd amount of time to utilize, shorter than a shopping trip at Wal-Mart, but longer than a cup of coffee at Starbucks and seeing as how the internet is making trips to banks and post offices less necessary, those options don’t really work either.

Although, it might be the right amount of time for a burger and fries. In fact, McDonald’s is already looking into that possibility, announcing last month that it will be testing out this concept at restaurant located in Cary, North Carolina, with the potential for more to follow. But for as many fast food restaurants as there are (not to mention my problems with many of their practices) and assuming they choose to go down this path, there still will be a real need to develop these charing locations. Leaving the door open for innovation around the idea.

[image via frankh]