This week, Better Place, the innovative electric car company, opened up their very first commercial battery swap station. The concept of swapping out depleted batteries for fresh charged ones is what distinguishes Better Place in the burgeoning EV market. You’ll never need to wait to charge your car—you just pull into one of the battery swap stations, robots switch out the batteries, and in three minutes you pull away. It’s really no different than a full service fill-up of 93 octane.
Say goodbye to range anxiety…..Just take a look at this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lp_6VyIeSY&feature
Bronfer explains how it works:
The battery switch process itself is thoroughly unexciting, which must mean great praise for Better Place’s work in developing the concept. The driver only needs to flash his Better Place RFID card at the machine, drive into the rather narrow tunnel and find something to occupy himself with during the upcoming 3 minutes. The car slides into position, slightly lifted – then an underground robot grabs the battery, disappears – and returns with a fresh one. All of this is invisible to the technologically impaired driver, while the geekier amongst us can watch the entire process streamed live on a TV planted outside.