Electric car infrastructure - Is this the birth of 'petrol' stations for electric cars? The first public trial of a system that 'refills’ electric cars in minutes will be launched this month. Better Place a Californian company will test its automated battery-swap stations in Tokyo.
As we know one of the biggest challenges to the large-scale implementation of electric cars is the problem of infrastructure for recharging. You're not going to buy a car you can only charge at home or at a very select number of charging points within a select number of cities.
Better Place, based in California has come up with a model that involves building networks of charging points and battery-switch stations (stop and swap batteries for electric cars was something suggested by the electriccarsite months ago!).
The idea is that at one of these electric stations there will be an automated mechanism that will swap your empty battery with a fully charged one. This allows your electric car to be refilled and ready to go in around the same amount of time it takes to fill a normal car with fuel.
The Tokyo Better Place trial will begin on the 26th April 2010. "We're applying the switch technology to taxis and working with Tokyo's largest taxi operators, Nihon Kotsu," said Better Place. The trial is expected to last for 90 days. We will be watching closely to see how it goes and will let you know.