Whether or not electric vehicles are the wave of the future, it seems the public is at least willing to give them a chance. However, vehicles like the battery-powered offerings from Zero Motorcycles have a problem: cruising range.
With a gasoline-powered engine, you can find fuelling stations everywhere. Not so with electric vehicles, which means you can only venture so far from home base before you have to worry about your battery running out, leaving you stranded.


Google, earth-conscious innovators that they are, is helping to work out a solution to this problem with an upgrade to their Google Maps service. The technology giant has taken information from the U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory to allow you to search for 7,000 alternative fuelling stations, including 600 Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) stations, and locate them with Google Maps.


Since this project works in conjunction with a U.S. Department of Energy database, it obviously won’t initially have much benefit to Canadian cities. However, as more and more drivers and riders consider electric vehicles, their success will be determined by technology like this that affects their ease of use.
