The car industry is rushing to produce electric cars that can be plugged in for recharging the batteries. But so far nothing has been heard from building or highway authorities about covering the world with the requisite outlets.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Nissan and NEC Corp. next year plan to start producing lithium-ion batteries. This type of battery is considered crucial to the development of electric cars because it can be recharged again and again.

Recharging it requires a place to plug it in. People could use electric cars for most of their driving, especially commuting and shopping, if there are plenty of recharging facilities so they don’t have to worry about running out of juice.

Time is not standing still here. Toyota plans to offer a plug-in version of its Prius hybrid in 2010, and General Motors will release another plug-in car, the Volt, the same year.

So at most we have a couple of years to prepare the infrastructure to make those new vehicles useful by laying wire and providing hookups wherever cars are parked. We had better start. (hh)