Better Place conducted its first public demonstration of a battery swap center on Wednesday, showing that a depleted electric-car battery can be swiftly replaced with a fresh one.
The replacement took about a minute, or less time than it takes to pump a tank of gas.
A plug-in battery charging station from Better Place
The demonstration in Yokohama, Japan, is a key milestone for the company, which hopes to use renewable power from sources such as solar cells to fuel autos.
Better Place needs to show the battery replacement process is quick and easy and automatic before consumers will warm up to its business plan of paying for electric power. That’s because a fully charged electric car will go only about 100 miles and consumers will need to reply on the stations to drive more than short distances.
Better Place plans to build 200 battery swap stations and 150,000 plug-in charging stations in Israel by 2011.
