Charge Your Electric Car Only During Off-Peak Hours

Let's say your electric car is a little low on voltage and you need to drive somewhere on a hot summer afternoon. You may have difficulty charging your car during the electric car-charging induced blackout:

When a Chevrolet Volt is plugged into a 240-volt outlet, it will use about 3.3 kilowatts of power, or about the same amount of power as a dishwasher or air conditioner.

Most people are already familiar with what can happen when thousands of air conditioners are plugged in and running at the same time during the summer: brownouts.

"The last thing we would want is for everyone to come home ... and plug them in at 5 or 6 o'clock on a hot, muggy summer afternoon ... when we are at our peak," DTE Energy Chairman Anthony Earley Jr. told the Free Press in an interview last week.

And then there are other challenges: What happens on road trips when drivers need to recharge the battery? What if you live in an apartment without a garage and electrical outlets?

As electric vehicles grow in popularity, so do the challenges

We wouldn't need electron-sucking electric cars if the Democrats would just let us go after our own oil and coal.