A California-based company is demonstrating a new way to overcome a key obstacle to the adoption of battery cars - their reliance on frequent, long stops for recharging.
Better Place has unveiled a model of its battery-swopping station in Yokohama, Japan and hopes to get support from Japan's auto heavyweights, government officials and consumers.
CEO and founder Shai Agassi said the company intended to establish networks of charging posts, supplemented by a series of battery exchange stations, where drivers traveling a long distance can quickly swop a flat battery for a charged one.
The driver would stop over a square underground platform that would reach up, remove the old battery from the underside of the vehicle and replace it with a new one - in about 40sec.
The Nissan-Renault alliance has teamed up with Better Place to build an battery vehicle network in Israel and Denmark and will introduce plug-in battery cars in the US in 2010 (globally two years later).
Agassi says the stations will accommodate various battery and car models and will cost about $500 000 (R4.2-million) to build - cheaper than a petrol station. He's certain the infrastructure must first be in place before car sales can take off.
"There's always the question of what comes first, the car or the infrastructure?" he said. "In this case it's the infrastructure." - Sapa AP