Street lamps may soon be capable of charging electric cars. According to Xinhua, the Beijing municipal government has recently launched its pilot project of making street lamps into chargers for electric cars.
Beijing just launched 88 high-pressure sodium lamps lining a road located in the city's Changping District that have already been transformed into energy-saving LED lamps. Eight charging poles have now been installed and put into trial operation. These charging polls can be used for charging electric cars whether by day or night.
Beijing has also installed charging poles in other strategic areas, such as new energy car dealers, parking lots, parks and expressways. As announced back in June 2014, the municipality is anticipating to build around 10,000 of these functional poles by 2017. This pilot project shows the municipality's commitment to the project.
The Chinese government has been encouraging people to buy electric vehicles for quite some time now. However, people have not been buying electric vehicles in droves precisely because of the inadequate charging infrastructure. As such, transforming the street lamps into charging poles can certainly encourage the people to check out this alternative when buying new cars. This is also complementary to the country's other projects to curtail worsening pollution problems.
After this pilot project, a charging system located at the Beijing-Shanghai expressway is also set to become fully functional. The pilot project has seen some success. Five electric cars engaged in a 1,262-kilometer test drive from Shanghai to Beijing, stopping to charge using the new lamps accessible at every 50 kilometers in each direction.