The Rev Dodgson said:

Kingy said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

True but if someone is using the car for commuting in the morning and the afternoon but not during the day there’s no no reason why carparks shouldn’t have facilities for plugging into the grid while it’s not being used. It’s relatively simple to design the financial incentives to ensure all stationary vehicles are plugged into the grid.

Yes, our local shopping center which is mostly Coles, has the carpark covered by solar panels, yay great. There are two chargers, with two outlets each. Most of the time, there are at least three cars plugged in.

How hard would it be to have a simple charger attached to each post that holds up the solar panels overhead.

In addition to all the other answers, surely the main difference is that electric cars are replacing an existing consumer of energy, and are much more efficient, whereas data centres are new consumers of energy, with questionable benefit.

also we note that ashload of people with cars actually commute by other means to their place of daytime work, leaving the car that would otherwise be off site failing to charge and supply the home, to be on site and solar charged ready for their dark time commutes to other places such as family gatherings where the power would be used