Earth-friendly consumers looking to drive green electric cars can now have a place to power up their vehicles – in their own garage, at their own electric car charging stations. Home builder KB Homes has announced this month that it is offering as an option to pre-wire its new “Built to Order” homes to accommodate charging stations for electric cars. This option is available nationwide.
To charge any of the new electric vehicles at home, homeowners need something called “Level 2″ charging. “Wheels,” the automobile blog at NYTimes.com, says that to charge a car at home, a wall-mounted 220-240-volt boxes is needed. The boxes can recharge an electric car’s batteries in four to eight hours.The cost and the hardware for such a system would normally cost somewhere between $750 and $2,000 per unit, according to the blog.
Being able to charge up at home no doubt would be a welcome thing for electric car owners – the Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Map created and maintained by the Cleantech Authority shows that in much of the U.S., public car-charging stations can be quite difficult to find.