A Better Place to Swap Batteries?
by
Richard Chen
Published: May 13th, 2009
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Wired Autopia has a video of Better Place’s prototype $500,000 quick battery swap station. Think of a Jiffy Lube station but much slicker and no scruffy guys in the basement. Driver pulls up, automated lift unscrews discharged battery from beneath and slides it down a conveyor belt, and then another battery is bolted in. Total time is a few minutes, similar to a gas tank fillup. The conventional-looking Nissan EV’s battery goes in where the gas tank was and has a similar shape. Tesla is to have their own battery swap setup that’s not compatible with that of Better Place. Let the hypothetical swappable battery wars begin!
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I've been distrustful of battery-swap programs. However, there are two things about Better Place that make me think it could work. 1. Israel is willing to bite the bullet. If it requires some modifications to their lifestyle in order to slow down the trillions of dollars flowing to the petrostates that is then used to fund terrorism against them, they'll do it. (Terrorism isn't theoretical there.) 2. The business model. If I owned the battery in my car, I wouldn't let a $10,000 piece of equipment get swapped out for a possible dud. However, with a leasing model, the company needs to give me a good battery at swap. If I get a dud then they swap it out and then deal with the old one. It's certainly a better idea than hydrogen.
i am unconvinced about this as well relatively expensive capital costs and it relies on the fact that your battery is *THIS* heavy, *THIS* size and lasts *THIS* long what if someone comes out with a battery the size of a 20kg suitcase that charges in 1hr off 110v that mounts in the floor of your trunk? all that infrastructure is dead - of course if your business revolves around the financing, business model, building and maintenance of that said infrastructure, I can see why you would push it if it fails after 5 years who gives a shit? I'd be on the Riviera trying my next venture. Hey it ain't my money, it's the taxpayers.
"Total time is a few minutes, similar to a gas tank fillup." And you will only have to do it once every 60 miles or 100 km, whichever comes first. "Israel has been planning on offering hundreds of them throughout their country." Which is tiny. It is about 8100 sq mi, about 90% the size of New Jersey. Much of which is desert. It is only about 200 mi from end to end, and 120 mi from Haifa in the north to Beer-sheva in the south, and only about 50 mi from east to west. Oh yeah, and it doesn't get cold. Different courses, different horses.