L.A. promises plug-and-play electric chargers

For electric cars to make sense there must be electric chargers at home, and those chargers require both permits and home inspections. The city is promising a quick and efficient process that includes customer service lines and Web sites. From the LAT:

Los Angeles has an advantage over every other city in the U.S. to quickly embrace electric vehicles, Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner said. Beutner is also the interim general manager of the DWP. "We're the only city in this country that owns our utility and can control our permitting apparatus to make it happen, and our pledge today is to make it happen within a week," Beutner said. "This is the single most important thing we can do as a city to enable the auto industry of the future, which is the electric vehicle." To prepare for the advent of electric vehicles, the DPW has upgraded about half of its nearly 15,000 transformers and about 40% of its power poles, he said in an earlier interview with The Times.