What do you fear most about using a car that is powered by electricity instead of gas? Are you afraid you will lose all your charge before you get to your destination and will have no place to power up again? This is called “range anxiety.” Anxiety escalates as the driver grows increasingly uncertain as to whether the battery-powered car will make it from point A to point B. The act of too much “stop and go” or extremes of heat and cold affect battery life. The car can use GPS system over Internet, so why not voice over Internet? The fearful driver will no longer fear if he is easily able to communicate with the necessary persons and organizations should he or she be in a bind. There also should be some way the person can correctly figure how much “juice” is left in the electric car battery.

“Drivers of electric cars know that they cannot simply re-fuel at any given time. They must re-charge, which requires planning,” explained Per Lindberg, Global Business Development Executive, Telenor Connexion. “A good communications solution is necessary in order to plan your driving. You will not find an electric car without a telematics solution – that’s where we come in.”

Telematrics is the integrated use of telecommunications and informatics, also known as ICT (Information and Communications Technology), often discussed at global conferences in the East. It is the science of sending, receiving and storing information via telecommunication devices. It includes but is not limited to Global Positioning System technology integrated with computers and mobile communications technology in automotive navigation system s. It is in 2010 popularly referred to in the use of such systems with road vehicles, in which case the term vehicle telematics may be used.

Telenor Connexion (not to be confused with Telenor, the telecommunciations company), based in Sweden and expert in Machine to Machine technology, has identified telematics as one of its key growth areas. The company makes telematics a standarf feature of electric cars.

“Telenor will deliver the communication. We have a network of companies that we will work with, including the electric utility companies, so it is possible to take on the role of mediator,” said Lindberg. – “The utility companies are now looking into how electric cars will affect their business, what they need to do and what their position will be, and we’re helping them along the way.”

Like any new technology, whether in a product or service, there is the potential for having to do a paradigm shift and or a need to conduct business in a new way. For example, when the owner of an electric car is visiting with friends and suddenly need to recharge, who should pay? The friend on his utility bill or the owner of the car? If the owner of the car, how does he get billed for electricity used at a friend’s house.

“The industry is developing ways of identifying whether electricity is used by the vehicle or the household, which results in a completely new business model for the utility companies,” said Lindberg. “From a Telenor perspective it doesn’t differ much whether it’s an electricity meter or a car that wants to send data via our network, it’s the data that we transmit in both cases. Where it gets interesting is when we start thinking about the electric vehicle communicating to the electric grid.”

Questions asked on Telenor Connexion website include, who will own the charging stations? When parking downtown, will parking and battery charging be billed together? And when you charge your car, can you select the company from which you will purchase your power?

According to Göran Brandt, Vice President of Business Development at Telenor Connexion, flexibility is the key to the successful spread of electric cars. “At the end of the day, it’s all about retrieving the necessary information, such as location, consumption, preferred method of payment, etc. There will most likely not be a single solution working in all countries and places. Flexibility and long-term consistency are essential.”

Another recent announcement regarding M2M and Teleomatics include: BSQUARE Corporation, a provider of software solutions, and the Ford Motor Company have jointly setup a Telematics Competency Center.

The machine-to-machine (M2M) sector spans a wide variety of telematics (where the device is portable or mobile) and telemetry (where the device is stationary) applications and services, including tracking shipping containers, finding lost pets and children, pay-as-you-drive insurance, subprime auto lending, and backhaul for digital signage and video surveillance cameras. Readers of this article may count on the fact each person may have at least one M2M device already in their smart phone.

 TMC (the Marketing Corporation) has a must not miss conference of M2M Evolution  October 2-4, 2010 in Los Angeles, California. Sign up now and meet the Techistan team at the DIDxchange booth.