It's the biggest fear for any EV driver. Where and when are you going to find a plug-in charging station? Whereas in countries like Portugal mobility networks are moving fast towards ubiquity with projects like Mobi.e, most nations are still far from it, with just a handful of charging stations in a few cities, with the most unusual service schedules (take San Francisco, for instance).More than an electric vehicle's relatively high price, it's the lack of a comprehensive charging infrastructure, especially when gas stations are everywhere, that keeps many consumers from buying a Nissan Leaf or a Chevrolet Volt right now. It shouldn't be a problem if you have your own charging device at home. But it is. Today's electric vehicles get between 30 to 150 kms with a full battery. When it runs out, it can take up to four hours to fully recharge it. That means that going away for the weekend with your EV is still out of question, unless you don't mind stopping every other town for several hours.
This is why Better Place presents quite an interesting solution. Instead of plug-in stations, the California based company offers a network of battery switch stations that use a robotic system to switch depleted batteries for fully-charged ones, and charge the depleted batteries in inventory, so that there's a fully-charged battery ready to be installed, in a matter of seconds (60 second switches have been accomplished in tests) each time the vehicle arrives at a station. Kinda like changing your son's toy's AA battery, instead of recharging it every time it runs out.
The concept is already in practice in Israel, Denmark and Australia, though on a limited test basis. The US, Japan and China are the next targets for Better Place's internationalization strategy.
Sure, there are doubts about the practicability of this idea in the long run. Will everyone abdicate of being the owner of their own car's battery? What are the legal implications of that when, say, someone crashes their car and loses a battery? Will Better Place's closed model of business keep companies from developing better batteries with longer lives? And if and when they do develop them, what's the point of such a battery swap system? The German reflection group on mobility has said no to battery swaps, just as Volkswagen did. What does that mean for Better Place? Anyway, it is a brilliant idea, at least on paper, and it could well be a practical solution in these first years of the EV revolution.
