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To: ModelBreaker
Anyone who comes up with a solution that stores a lot of electricity safely, cheaply, quickly, and without a lot of weight, and with quick charging and discharging would be a billionaire several times over. That has been true for at least thirty or forty years.

The solution is trivial. Standardize the batteries, and make them replaceable, just like the ones on a cordless drill.

Say your car had four or six batteries. Your "gas gauge" tells you how many are charged, how many are discharged, and the status of the working one. You roll into a battery replacement station and they take out the discharged ones and install fresh ones. You keep the working one, until it is fully discharged. You can purchase as many charged ones as you like.

It is just like bottles with a deposit -- you only have to pay for recharging the battery -- you get a credit for your old one.

Now if you absolutely want to, you can put a charging station in your home, but the whole point here is that you don't need fast charging if you have fast replacement.

12 posted on 04/17/2008 10:20:22 PM PDT by CurlyDave
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To: CurlyDave
Now if you absolutely want to, you can put a charging station in your home, but the whole point here is that you don't need fast charging if you have fast replacement.

That solves one of the problems. Except that my wife won't move big ol' batteries each morning in and out of an engine compartment.

13 posted on 04/17/2008 10:25:59 PM PDT by ModelBreaker
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To: CurlyDave
Swapping batteries has already been proven viable for fleets of municipal buses. It would also work for other fleet vehicles in and around municipalities.

However, I don't think that battery swapping is the solution for private vehicles on road trips.

One of the main problems is that batteries (all types) lose a fraction of their capacity, every charge/discharge cycle. Therefore, in practice, the battery packs would be anything but standardized. Some would be good for (say) 150 miles — while others would only be good for 100 miles. That could leave a lot of drivers stranded between battery-swaping stations.

18 posted on 04/17/2008 10:49:54 PM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
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