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, and Panasonic Electric Works which will develop and produce electric vehicle chargers with rivals.

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.

Charging machines "will be installed where beverage vending machines already exist or together with new ones. There are various options," she said.

SoftBank Telecom and SoftBank Mobile are due to provide telecom services to connect the charging systems, the group said in a press release.

Automakers such as Nissan, which launched its all-electric Leaf last year, are gambling that electric cars with zero tailpipe emissions will catch on and, some time in the future, start to drive traditional gas-guzzlers off the road.

But many consider the lack of a charging network as the key obstacle to the proliferation of electric vehicles, prompting consumer concerns such as "range-anxiety", or the fear that their cars will run out of juice between charging points.

earlier related report
Google Maps now helps users beat traffic jams
Washington (AFP) March 7, 2011 - Google upgraded its popular Google Maps on Monday to suggest faster routes to drivers based on real-time traffic conditions.

Google Maps Navigation, released in beta, or test mode, shows various routes along with estimated travel times and uses red, green and yellow color-coding to show how traffic is moving at any given time.

"Before today, Navigation would choose whichever route was fastest, without taking current traffic conditions into account," Roy Williams, a software engineer with the Google Maps team, said in a blog post.

"It would also generate additional alternate directions, such as the shortest route or one that uses highways instead of side roads."

But from now on, "our routing algorithms will also apply our knowledge of current and historical traffic to select the fastest route from those alternates," he said. "Navigation will automatically guide you along the best route given the current traffic conditions."

The new feature can be used in North America and Europe where both Google Maps Navigation and real-time traffic data are available, Google said.