Personally I don't see battery swap cars catching on. The few people who could put up with the limited range and inconvenience should probably take the bus instead. Unlike Europe and the US Australia has decades of natural gas and I think we should use CNG. That offers the option of home refuelling with a $3000 compressor. So instead of crawling around with a low battery looking for a swap station you drive all day (say 500km) on a single tank then take it home for an overnight refill. As more trucks convert to CNG as a diesel substitute service stations will offer CNG bowsers. Therefore you should be able to drive Sydney-Melbourne on one or two stops for CNG as opposed a dozen or more stops for battery swaps.

A variation on this is of course the CNG-battery hybrid with more efficient electric drive but that won't leave a lot of space for luggage and pets. I suggest that governments now offering bailout money to car companies don't try to pick the winner in advance but let things sort themselves out.

I'm pleased to see an innovative approach in this area. However, the bottom line is still whether an electric car would be the best-value solution to meet my needs - that seems a long way off even with a carbon tax, from the article it would cost me a lot more and not cover all my journeys. It's a lot easier to provide a widespread, dense network in a small country than it would be in Australia, and having an electric car for metropolitan use will not be a cheap option for those who make long car journeys regularly.

I'm sure the technical limitations of electric cars, range, performance etc, can be overcome, given a little time, this is not the main problem.

The real problem is, where is the electricity, to charge the batteries going to come from? While the arguments about coal, nuclear, & renewable power generation rage between left, & right, in many countries, no new generation capacity is getting built. In countries like the UK, If the rubbish doesn't stop soon, & power station building start, it is a matter of can they keep the lights on, not can they charge the car battery.

This scheme, to take over our transport needs would require at least a 30% increase on power generation. The current crop of renewables a have no chance of doing this.

What a delicious irony. Which do the greens hate most? The petrol powered car, or the coal fired power station?

Missing from all the discussion is battery technology. As pointed out the current crop of batteries will only last about 100 miles before a recharge is required which plainly will not work outside the boundaries of our larger cities.
The only solution currently on offer is an ancillary petrol powered engine to generate more electricity to charge the batteries - this is still a petrol powered vehicle with the added encumbrance of weight and electricity transference inefficiencies of batteries and electric drive motors.

The ideal would be a battery that is light weight, recharges in minutes and discharges over several hundred miles with a life time comparable to the rest of the car. This battery would also need the capacity to offer fast acceleration.

This is a research project at MIT in Boston - too bad our government and car manufactures here in Aus are not willing or able to step up to this obvious technology need. It seems they would rather dig for coal or more oil.

The move to fully electric private and light commercial vehicles is happening much faster than anyone predicted 5 years ago...(it may slow down while oil prices remain low). But Hasbeen is right - the biggest problem is going to be what stationary power source will be used. Petrol is bad. Coal is bad. Government actually has a chance to get ahead of the curve on this one by ensuring that the recharge infrastructure that will be needed is sourced from renewables.

Natural gas can be done - cng or lpg - but this is temporary fix and is clearly not the direction that global automobile companies are taking...

The recent Rudd-Holden announcement is a bit bewildering in this regard - it appears to be about 10 years behind the rest of the world and determined not to catch up.

Appreciating that many need a longer range vehicle in Australia, many also do not, and could hire one on the rare occasions when they do. The small electric runabouts are much more efficient than petrol driven equivalents so the greenies probably won't worry about the extra but now very efficient and clean coal stations.

My specific concern is how long the batteries last. How many years? How long did the Lithium polymer battery in your iPod last? How much to replace? Can they be cheaply reconditioned? Can they be cheaply or safely recycled? Is there even a plant to do so? What is the impact and wastes of battery production?

I would be fine with a runabout with 100km range, but not if I have to replace $15,000 of batteries every 5 years.

Does anybody have figures?

Rusty.

Rusty I think the company behind Project Better Place wants to own and refurbish the batteries with the car owner on something like a phone plan. You own the car, they rent, replace or recharge the batteries for a fee. Whatever dollar amounts they might quote are sure to change. It doesn't seem like a winner as we head toward double digit unemployment. Nor for anybody who can remember what it was like to drive for hours on a tank of cheap fuel.

Taswegian,

Yeah. I get the point of the business model, but the things have to be worthwhile to the individual daily use owner before there is a definite profitable economy of scale available to the hire company.

Which brings me to my question of the viability of the battery itself. How many discharge cycles before performance drops below 50% (or whatever). Seen any ads for the eco-friendly recyling of lithium polymer cells? Does Toyota tell us what it intends to do with spent prius batteries. How much for a full new set? I'm sure the info is out there and is good, I just happenned to miss it.

Rusty.

Did some more looking on recycling of Lithium polymer cells.

They should be more recyclable and safer than the nickel based chemistries, but there are few satisfactory programs in place so far.

I would love a genuine expert to comment as I have no way of filtering the many hits available.

Any takers?

Rusty.

I am surprised that no one has picked up on the real problem
Different electric cars will have different operating voltages.
They also may have different battery types.
The banks of batteries will probably be distributed into different
parts of the vehicle to distribute the weight and keep the weight on
each axle close to the same.

Different types of batteries require different charging rate profiles.
Does the car have its own built in 240 volt mains charger ?

Swapping battery banks would immediately imply a small bank of cells.
These are just the first problems that I can think up.
It seems to me that the charging station at a shopping centre or
workplace should be 240 volt and that the car have a built in charger.
With switch mode chargers not too much weight would be involved.
Then there are no problems with battery voltage and type etc.

My question, what happened to the idea of stations , to change the electolyte in car batteries?
No heavy lifting, no worry re battery voltage, delivery similar to filling with petrol.
The danger of fueling with acid can be little different to fueling with gas.
fluff

Lithium battery tech is coming along nicely now that there is some serious investment. Hobby modelers have been responsible for a lot of improvement, but there is nothing like an oil price shock to get some serious investment happening.
Government, of course is still supporting last centuries factories to keep their mates happy and be seen to do something for employment. (They need to setup another factory to disassemble large steel 6cyl cars: that will guarantee even more jobs! We can put finance execs in charge to ensure maximum jobs with minimum actual "stuff happening"
:-) )
Toshiba now has Lithium cells that can be fast charged in under 5 minutes. Still a bit too long for a roadside stop, but getting there.
Costs are more a factor of finance than technology now: Lithium is abundant and cheap, recycling is feasible.
For the ultimate power supply: Existing Solar/thermal technology is perfect for Australia and can be implemented at about the current cost of coal. (This has been done large scale in Texas, of all places) (Forget "clean coal" as it is an absolute scam. Will never be cost effective!)
The "problem" of investment is actually a "solution" to recessionary unemployment, so it is just a matter of priorities and distribution. Our priorities have been outsourcing industry and building expensive homes for the last decade, now it is time to shift back to productive industries.
Battery leasing will not work because it is too much part of the cost/performance/range decision and so should remain part of the vehicle.
Government can do more: Registration for EVs should be free for the next decade to encourage innovation.
Another thing is to allow electric bicycles to have more than 3 wheels to bridge the gap between open-air e-bikes and the sub 80kph commuter.
Removing the barriers to innovation should be the governments main role as they are clearly not capable of leadership in this or any other technical area.

Ozandy interesting that you should mention the 4 wheel vs 3 wheel vs 2 wheel alternatives of electrically powered transportation. If we identify the needs of the everyday home to work commuter he/she is taking the car because of 1) lack of public transport or 2) needs to drop off the kids to school on the way to work or 3) has got a work car which is part of his/hers pay package.

I would think that the majority of commuters would be well served by ebikes such as the Toshiba battery powered Schwinn Tail wind if there was separate bike lanes provided for bike commuters. The small compact battery pack of 1-2 kgs can be recharged in 30 minutes and would allow for 3-4 hours use with a range of 40 -60 km.

For the commuters which need to lug the kid around the 3 wheel solution ( a trike carrying 2 people) would be more useful.

And for the long distance commuters with serious transport needs and that are expecting to do some country driving we need to consider the 4 wheel ecar with all the problems associated with battery handling and charging, restriction in range, necessary infrastructure and complicated leasing plans for replacing batteries.

The ebikes and better bike paths should be implemented right away with only minor infrastructure investments. At least that would take petrol powered cars of our choked roads. See my recent article www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8319 for more info.

Fluff4;
> my question, what happened to the idea of stations , to change the
electolyte in car batteries?
Are you thinking of lead acid batteries ?
Forget it, they have already been left behind.

I have seen a converted Dihatsu hatchback which is a very useful
local runabout. I think the range is about 60 KM + and the owner is
very happy with it. Does all her shopping and kid chauffeuring with
no hassles.

Electric cars like this are highly practical and will only get better.