A popular small electric car has a 24KWh battery which might power a small house for 2 days but the snags are all of the 24 KWh wouldn't be available without adversely affecting battery life. There would also be some % loss in the inverter required to turn your battery voltage into AC. If you got 20KWh per charge that would only save you $4 at UK energyprices and your energy may be much cheaper than ours.
I suspect the real issue might be that The battery packs life could deteriorate at more than $4 per charge cycle which would negate the whole exercise.
My view is electric cars are not really Green while fossil fuel are used to generate the electricity. The only reason they are remotely economically viable is because of the vastly lower tax rates imposed on electricity.
I had a similar thought about the "free" charging stations and think that I would give it a try if it was a battery pack SWAP arrangement. although I *think8 that running my house through an inverter would be no more detrimental to battery life than using them for their intended purpose, the cost of battery replacement is sobering.
Aside from the potential foreshortening of battery life, the idea seems sound, especially when you live in a country where basic unleaded fuel is north of $1.60 per litre and going to increase regularly.
The power consumption of electric cars is not the issue for me from an ecological point of view - Yes the power is generated from non-green sources, but the amount of carbon and other nasties produced when the coal fired power station "makes" the electricity to charge my batteries is less than the combined cycle of manufacture and use of an alternate hydrocarbon fuel/
The real issue is that the manufacturing of the cars themselves is hardly "green" and the input cost on non-renewables to make batteries is staggering.
