The amount of time that is consumed in charging electric vehicles is the biggest hindrance in their adoption by people. The quick chargers made by Japanese automakers, however, take as little as 20 minutes to charge the battery.

In a bid to promote spread of the zero-emission vehicles, top Japanese carmakers Toyota and Nissan helped in setting up a group to regulate fast-charge stations for electric cars on Monday.

About 158 companies, like California utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and French automaker Peugeot-Citroen PSA will be joining the group, known as CHAdeMO, which means charge for moving. The group will focus on the fact that chargers should work with every electric vehicle on road.

With lots of cars hitting the roads this year, creating such a standard is very important. Mitsubishi i-MiEV is running on Japan's roads and is heading to Europe, similar to the Peugeot iOn and Citroen C-Zero later this year. Just about every automaker plans to have their EVs in showrooms by 2014.

About 100 charging stations will be set up throughout Israel by next year, as planned by Silicon Valley startup Better Place. There are a lot of quick-charge stations in Japan.

Hiroyuki Ino, Executive Vice President of Tokyo Electric said, "There are 1,000 electric cars and 150-fast-charge stations in Japan already. Our aim is to form a standard in Japan and make use of that in the world".