George Monbiot has written an article in the Guardian today entilted "Save the planet in 10 steps" – here’s point 7:
"Oblige all chains of filling stations to supply leasable electric car batteries. This provides electric cars with unlimited mileage: as the battery runs down, you pull into a forecourt. A crane lifts it out and drops in a fresh one. The batteries are charged overnight with surplus electricity from offshore wind farms. Timescale: fully operational by 2011." Garage forecourts are completely alien right now. I drive in and try and get hold of some water for the batteries every now and again and usually fail. People are buying electric cars as quickly as they can get hold of them and the infrastructure isnt there by any means. Click on the image to view video. 3.7 Meg QT.
Links:electric car vlogging video podcast vlog George Monbiot ev
that “filling stations exchanging batteries of electric cars” ideas is EXACTLY like the one in my old Usborne kids science book on Electricity- it dated back to the 70’s.
the new battery slid into a compartment under the car, and the spent one slid out the other side.
the Usborne Future cities book also had some interesting predictions of the future- 2 visions of a city in 2010 or so- with petrol cars/diesel trucks + kerosene airliners, and with electric vehicles/underground pipelines + hydrogen airliners.
One of the problems with exchanging batteries at filling stations is that they degrade with age. Who’d want to exchange their £1,200 of new batteries for a life-expired old set? You’d probably need some sort of battery leasing scheme.
You’d also need a lot more battery sets around so that you could be sure that the garage would always have a new set charged and ready for you, so overall costs would be higher than just having 1 set per car.
Lead Acid batteries should be replaced with a new type of battery that weigh less ;”;