Yesterday the Obama administration announced “an unprecedented set of actions” to grow the U.S. plug-in electrified vehicle market.

The initiative represents a broad collaboration between federal agencies, state governments, major automakers, utilities, and others to aid the ongoing push to make electric cars viable alternatives to the internal combustion variety.

Perhaps chief in a laundry list of public and private sector agreements is up to $4.5 billion in loan guarantees for commercial scale charging — including fast charging — to create a nationwide network.

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Nissan and BMW announced Monday that they would add 120 public fast-charging stations in 19 states to significantly expand electric vehicle infrastructure for cars not called Tesla.

The 120 stations would supplement to Tesla’s network of more than 200 Supercharger sites around the U.S. and Canada, placed throughout the countries that serve as a backbone for long-distance EV travel. (Coast to coast records are already a thing.)

Sorry, North Dakota, still no love for you. It’s a shame. Fargo is such a super town.

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Just in time for the Fourth of July travel weekend, Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MIEV owners will have access to 633 CHAdeMO fast chargers, up from 160 stations in January 2013.

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Though consumers in the United Kingdom may not have been too interested in electric vehicles last year, Nissan says the majority of those sold belong to the automaker.

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After a ruling in federal court, a Chicago area electric vehicle charging network may finally become completely operational. The quick charging stations were installed under a $1.9 million federal grant, but two contractors who installed them for the network’s original owner, 350Green, had been locked in a legal battle over ownership of the system.

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If you’re just now reading this series, here’s what’s going on. Because reviews of electric vehicles (my own included) seem to be 1/4 review and 3/4 whining about EV related issues, I decided to divorce the review from the “EV experience” and post daily about driving a car with an 80-95 mile range. You can catch up by going to Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 before coming back to the saga. Don’t worry, we’ll wait for you. Day three ended with my battery at 15% because I drove the orange creamsicle Fiat we have named “Zippy Zappy” over 175 miles. I don’t have a 240V charging cable at home so the car told me it would be 24 hours until the car was charged at 120V. Good thing day four was a Saturday. (Read More…)

The SAE unveiled their latest standard for quick-charging electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids that could cut charging times to as short as 20 minutes.

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