Electric cars really are becoming the wave of the future, as evidenced by the appearance of Tesla’s Elon Musk on the Colbert Report last night. There’s still a challenge to be faced however. What do you do when you’re away from home and your car needs a quick jolt of battery juice?

The solution is about to be unveiled today in the San Jose McEnery Convention Center parking lot. Mayor Chuck Reed and Coulomb Technologies CEO Richard Lowenthal will be showing off one of 5,000 public and private CT500 charging stations being installed around the country.

The CT500 charging station is a 7.2 kw single output station designed for residential and light commercial applications. The program to install the charging stations is being funded by the Department of Energy and the Energy  Commission through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

About $37 million dollars is being spent to install these new stations in homes, commercial properties, and increasingly, government facilities in nine areas around the country, including the Bay Area. In fact, government facilities are among the leading consumers of electrical vehicles to date, with cities like San Jose gradually replacing their existing fleets with hybrids and fully electric vehicles. The shorter distances travelled by these vehicles are ideally suited to the new electric vehicles.
Read More at NBC Bay Area.
Read More at The Hill.