Telekom Austria has announced plans to turn old telephone boxes into recharging stations for electric cars.
During the test phase the service will be free of charge. Following commercial launch, charging stations will offer the possibility to pay via mobile phone using text messages, paybox or a RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) card with a RFID chip.
13,500 telephone booths are currently operated by the company countrywide out of which 700 are multimedia stations and in the first roll out phase, the focus will again be on multimedia stations offering on-street parking opportunities for electric cars.
By year-end 2010 a total of 30 charging stations will be on stream.
Admittedly, the scheme is still in its infancy: there are just 223 electric cars currently registered in Austria at the moment, plus 3,559 hybrid cars, from a total 4.36 million cars on Austrian roads.
But the Austrian motor vehicle association VOeC is predicting that the number of electric vehicles will significantly increase in Austria over the next few years, with e-scooters exceeding 60,000 and electric cars 115,000 by 2015.
