(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
The startup company Better Place, that’s who!
The scheme these guys have undertaken solves one of the major problems of electric cars: recharging. Better Place’s approach: replace the whole battery in less time than it takes to fill up a tank with gas! Recharge the batteries at leisure and reuse. If you buy an electric car, you subscribe to their service and can swap out drained batteries for recharged ones at properly equipped stations. The other crucial step in the process is to connect up with fuel stations to install the replacement bays. Wherever you can get gas, you can get a battery! Here’s a cool demo of the technology.
Who knows if this will work? But it seemed to me to be a pretty interesting concept.
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Israel is going to build a bunch of battery swapping stations and have 100,000 electric cars within the next few years, although there have been some snags in the plans and the leader of the program might not be as reliable as originally thought.
‘gonna be one of the first big energy delivery incumbents of near future. Of course they could really use a bit of standardization assist from the car manufacturers. OK, stop laughing. I mean it!
Too bad though, since this is perhaps one of the very few times the MBA-types would be able to appropriately use the word “synergy”.
. . . although it remains to be seen if battery technology will advance quickly enough such that roadside change-out stations would be redundant and more expensive then just recharging in the garage . . .
I started saying this when the first hybrids came out: make a standard battery pack, replace it like you would fill your tank, change it out like a cell phone battery.
Shoulda patented the idea. But I hope it gets traction and is actually implemented.
would it be to have two battery packs sold with every car?
You can leave one in the garage hooked up to the solar panel-(or 120v Edison plug) all day while you’re using the other one to commute with.
I would especially like to drive to work, and plug in to the office 120v system, making my commuting “fuel” free.
The roof top solar panel could charge the batteries while sitting in the parking lot, more free “fuel”.
I’d have to avoid the 120v recharger since my state uses 80% coal to produce grid juice.