Respecting and not fearing high voltage electricity, and putting some faith in charging station developers to make their equipment safe, could help bring about clean, emission-free electric vehicles to the mainstream sooner than later.

Charging at 480 volts instead of 110 or 220 volts will reduce charging times from as long as overnight to under an hour, perhaps as little as 15 measly minutes. That is only slightly longer than it takes to fill up a tank with gasoline or diesel fuel. Fifteen minutes is time to grab a hot cup of coffee, make a call or two or send a text message while safely parked and watching that battery level meter rise.

Long charging times have been one of the hurdles to the mass commercialization, public acceptance and the adoption of electric vehicles. High-voltage charging can do away with this hurdle.

High-voltage, 480-volt charging, cannot be done in the home, of course. It’s safe to say most US homes have no more than 220 volts at the panel box and really old homes will have even less.

Aside being nearly equivalent in “fueling” time with liquid fuels, high-voltage charging may add at least two brand new dimensions to the scope of electric vehicle marketing.

1) It would create new business opportunities for liquid fuel filling station owners.

2) It would create the opportunity for electric vehicle charging in urban areas that do not have off-street parking or privately-owned parking spots and garages.

If there is a major hurdle to high-voltage charging it is the public’s fear of high volts. In the US people are comfortable with the 110 volts available from a standard wall outlet. Most of the world has 220 volt line voltage at wall outlets. What will the rest of world think of 480?

Coulomb Technologies and Aker Wade Power Technologies will be offering 480 Volt charging equipment later this year. Aker Wade Power Technologies CEO Bret Aker says:

“Field studies in Tokyo have shown that deploying fast chargers increase vehicle usage by more than 50 percent. And this is with first generation battery electric vehicles that were yet to be optimized for fast charging.With coming improvements in Li-ion technology charge times will be reduced to as little as fifteen minutes. This is the point where consumers will abandon gasoline for electricity. This is the tipping point for electric vehicles.”