Nissan Leaf. Tesla Roadster. What's the name of that dopey $42,000.00 GM mostly-battery-but-has-a-motor thing? [Oh yeah -Chevy Volt - how could I forget?] Battery powered vehicles are city-only cars, thus ruling them out for the masses. How about standardized battery packs that can be changed at Service Stations - those same Service Stations that pump petrol into our "dirty" vehicles?
Pulling into a Service Station every 100 miles or so for a re-fuel (ie, replace the discharged battery packs with freshly charged ones), would still get me from San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles in just 2 "re-fuelings". I have never read about such a proposal in any print or on-line publication. The idea is so obvious to me, but apparently to nobody else?
I liked this discussion of the issue. I like the idea of standard sized battery packs, where each vehicle uses multiples of them. A small car (think Smart Car-sized) might have 4 standard SIZED (not power, but size) battery packs, and an electric SUV might have 16 or 20. Any given vehicle could be programmed to run on some of the packs, while leaving the others in reserve. For instance, let's suppose a sub-compact sized car has 4 packs. It could run on 2 of the packs until they are drained, then start using the remaining 2. When pulling into a Service Station, the 2 dead packs could be swapped out, with the remaining 2 packs continuing in service in the vehicle.
This also solves the problem of having a huge bill to replace all batteries down the road, and also lack of recycling the batteries - people might throw them in the trash. You would pay for the amount of energy in the battery you "rent" at the Service Station, and an on-board meter in the car would confirm the amount of electric power you have purchased (just like your fuel gage does now). You get credit for the amount of juice left in the battery pack that you swapped out. The Service Station would have plenty of space for continuously charging the drained batteries as they come in to be changed.
