Israeli Firm Cracks Electric Car Anxiety With Battery Swap Out Stations

The BBC's Hugh Sykes tests out a new electric car that allows Israeli drivers to zip all over the country, without worrying about flat batteries.

I wish I'd thought of it. It's so obvious.

One of the greatest mental barriers to buying an all-electric car is what is known as "range anxiety".

When the battery runs down, it can take anything up to eight hours to re-charge it. So you're stuck.

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vdiv - 9/4/2012 9:00:05 PM

+1 Boost

Sounds like a great idea, but it suffers from a couple of significant issues. It requires the deployment and operation of very expensive and complex battery swapping stations, it limits the variety of batteries (and vehicle design) and restricts their evolution.

MorePower - 9/4/2012 9:50:55 PM

+1 Boost

It does not restrict battery evolution. In fact, it can be argued that gains in battery technology will force this firm to innovate at a faster rate or become extinct.

chewy - 9/4/2012 11:15:46 PM

+1 Boost

I think what he meant is that no one is going to be building hundreds of these to service only 1 vehicle. All the EVs out currently in the US are not designed for swapping and getting everyone to agree on a standard would be quite hard. Briefly skimming the article it looks like all of this is paid by government grants. Don't see how it would be profitable when each battery is 10-15,000 dollars each yet the cost is only 50 dollars per customer.

Basically each such building would cost as much as a gas station to create but looks like it can only service 1 car at a time from one design while a gas station can have 10 cars refeuling at a time and has a thousand times more potential customers.