Better than Better Place
Project Better Place hit the headlines in recent years with concept of a battery swap. You drive your EV into a station and a robot lops out the depleted battery and sticks in a fresh one. This is supposed to put an end to concerns over waiting an hour to replenish the battery. Suddenly we’re put back on par with the more traditional refuelling practices.
The pace of development in battery technology might well scuttle Better Place. MIT recently announced that they’ve successfully used viruses to build a lithium-ion battery that charges fully in 10 minutes. Still slightly slower than the typical gas station stop but seemingly adequate (especially if the entire thing costs a about two euros).
Something else interests me and Nissan have been making noises about this recently. ‘Plugging in’ might too become outdated as contactless inductive charging comes on the scene. South Korea has even looked at installing metal strips on their highways (interestingly, per kilometre it comes in at about a tenth the cost of building a subway). A suitably built vehicle could technically charge as it drives down the main main roads.
A large amount of the hassle could be stripped out of charging in this way. It’s quite conceivable that we’ll recharge our cars without leaving them, either by pulling into a special bay or even at traffic lights.
Until that point, you can expect companies like Evoasis to set up charging stations that act as specialist battery centres. They’ll be experts with regard to every type on the market and so the initial handling of dangerous voltages will be handled by their ground staff. Yes, waiting times initially won’t be ideal but they’ll attempt to offset some of the inconvenience with a dedicated waiting area (a kind of cafe or work lounge, probably like you find at an airport).
And the initial inceptions of this kind of infrastructure won’t be static. Evoasis sees itself as something of a science centre and there’s a lot of credence to this idea. There’ll be a lot of money in it for those who discover good rapid charging mechanisms, but they need people on the road first.
