In message , at 21:56:46 on
Fri, 22 May 2009, Recliner remarked:
And of course the electricity to power said vehicles needs to be
generated somewhere and somehow - which is in itself a rather wider
debate, and indeed one which is currently going on.

And in London the problem is distributing the electricity from the
grid to the end users. Even if there was a plentiful source of
electricity, you'd have to do quite a lot of work to get it where
it's needed.

Don't you need 3-phase for fast battery charging? Otherwise, it takes
many hours.

You need DC to charge a battery, and that can be derived from 1-phase
mains. But the supply would normally have to be 3-phase if you were
wanting to draw much more than 25kw.
--
Roland Perry