You decided to do your part for the environment and buy a shiny new electrified Nissan Leaf. You’re cruising down the highway, amazed at how quiet the car is, then, something out of the ordinary happens. You run out of juice. Now what do you do without your 200 Amp, 240 Volt charging station near by?

Range anxiety could become more of an issue than many may think, for companies selling the EVs, they believe it is something to take into consideration. This is why the Japan Automobile Federation hopes to eliminate much of those fears that keep many people skeptical and wary of EVs. If my Leaf will only run for 75-130 miles on a charge, what’s going to happen next? We’re used to gas stations being positioned on nearly every street corner, so we can expect our gas to be there. But with EVs under the $50k mark, we’re not going to get the range of say a Tesla Roadster (250 miles). Although most people do not commute more than 33.4 miles a day, on average. So why all the anxiety? Perhaps its those road trips, the off time when we’d like to just take off and go for a while. With that in mind, Nissan is running a trial in Japan where roadside service vehicles carry an EV charger with them. Nissan built the prototype service truck which will charge EV drivers who don’t have enough juice to get home. The trial started in  Kanagawa Prefecture this week, which uses a Nissan Leaf as its governor’s official car. JAF will deploy the roadside service vehicle with the charger from its Kanagawa branch office. In December 2010, JAF conducted roadside assistance training for EVs using a Nissan Leaf at the Nissan Education Center for its staff from throughout Japan. They also initiated practical roadside service training across Japan using other EVs beside the Leaf. Will it come to the US? Only time and stranded EV drivers will tell.

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San Francisco will offer free EV charging at 19 city-owned parking garages and at the San Francisco International Airport until the end of 2013 . Next month, the city will install more than 80 plug-ins to encourage the purchase of EVs. As well, officials hope the chargers will reduce fears of not having enough juice to get from point A to point B.

Besides parking garages, the city is looking at locations like public libraries as potential charging spots. City officials claim that three hours of charging time could return 80 per cent of battery power to a Nissan Leaf; the battery would be full in about six hours.

The first of the charging stations will be installed in June 2011. The stations will offer both 120 volt and 240 volt charging in order to serve the widest range of vehicles. The free chargers are part of the city’s plan to reduce greenhouse gases 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012, and to see EVs as instrumental to the plan. The transportation sector generates more than a third of all greenhouse gas emissions in San Francisco, and private cars and trucks make up over 90 per cent of those emissions.

Officials hope that within five years, 10 per cent of cars sold in San Francisco will be electric. With EV owners having access to home garages as well as city-owned parking garages, it will become substantially easier to own one.

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