See Demonstration of "Project Better Place" Electric Car Use

Project Better Place, which has partnered with the state of Hawai‘i to bring electric vehicles powered by renewable energy here by 2012, and which we wrote a lot about recently, just unveiled a video of what battery changing stations might look like and how they work.

Watch the video here.

You drive into a special battery changing bay, and one minute and thirteen seconds later, your car's discharged battery has electronically been removed and a fully charged one put in its place - so you can drive away. One minute later!

From Gas2.com:

"...'Range anxiety,' as it’s called, describes the most fundamental fear expressed by would-be adopters of electric vehicles. It’s no different than the fear of driving through sparsley inhabited parts of the United States, where it’s important to know your car’s mileage and the distance to the next gas station.

Electric vehicles differ in that their fuel is electricity stored in a battery pack. But battery packs can’t be recharged in the same amount of time that it takes to pump 10 gallons of gas. It usually takes hours. That means that either EVs are restricted to short driving distances, fully charging during long breaks in commuting (like work or home), or, they just never take off.

Better Place intends to solve this problem, and thereby eliminate range anxiety, by swapping out used batteries for fully-charged replacements. If this can be done in the same time as a pit stop (under 5 minutes), it would offer drivers a hassle-free way to dramatically extend the range of their electric vehicles."

Also, Shai Agassi, founder of Project Better Place, was just named to a pretty impressive list. It's the Scientific American 10: Guiding Science for Humanity, defined as "ten researchers, politicians, business executives and philanthropists who have recently demonstrated outstanding commitment to assuring that the benefits of new technologies and knowledge will accrue to humanity."

This Project Better Place is fascinating to me, and how interesting that we here in Hawai‘i are about to become one of the "Better Places." I look forward to seeing how it all unfolds.

Thanks to Damon Tucker for calling this video to our attention.

- posted by Leslie Lang

Comments

[Sonia]

I'm excited about this possibility....Mahalo for keeping us posted, Leslie...