Japan is notorious for its fascination with vending machines -- as of 2008, there were 5.5 million of them across the nation. And these aren't merely the candy bar and soda variety, either -- Japan has vending machines that sell live crabs, grow lettuce, are covered in moss, and dispense smart cars. And by this time next year, it will have 10,000 vending machines that charge electric cars.Ten Japanese companies said Monday they plan to install electric vehicle chargers at the sites of beverage vending machines across Japan in a cost-cutting tie-up. The consortium includes Forking Co., a major vending machine operator ... Forking has business ties with companies which own a combined 1.2 million vending machines across Japan, or about a half of the national total, company official Reiko Kobayashi said. The firms plan to install some 10,000 electric vehicle chargers at the sites of the vending machines in the first year of the project, which is due to start at the end of March, she added.
Smart. Pick a cultural touchstone and ease in the new technology (remember, even in Japan, conventional wisdom is that electric cars are far from a sure bet) at highly-visible, much-used nodes that the public is intimately familiar with. I guess the domestic analog would be something like installing EV charging stations at fast food drive-thrus, or TVs showing Jersey Shore.
I think this will do very well. By giving people the option to recharge their cars as conviently as pumping gas, more people will be encouraged to buy them. The Nissan Leaf is already available in Japan and hopefully, this new technology will help it become a more popular car.
Wow. I think this is really fascinating! I think that the selling of live crabs, and lettuce in vending machines is a little weird, but it seems to be doing financially well over there. I think this is a really good financial adventure, it will be just like another gas station, and it will be cheaper and more environmentally healthy for the environment. This change, will hopefully help to make more people switch to using vehicles that need to be electrically charged, which in the end, will make for a better economic and healthy environment. This seems like a really good idea, and I think it will do well in Japan. Hopefully many more places, countries, companies, and people will catch on to do this.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see how this plays out. Depending on the price of these "vending machines," we could eventually see them replacing gas stations.
ReplyDeleteI don't really understand Japan's need to be extremely high tech. They have all these crazy technologies and, personally, when I think of Japan, I think of techno music as well. One time, I was at an airport in Minnesota and there was a BestBuy vending machine. It had laptops, cameras, iPods, headphones, memory cards, etc. It was really cool.
ReplyDelete