Not a well thought out plan. I can just imagine two or three people hanging a round a pole for hours at a time waiting for their car to charge so they can go home. Efficient battery technologoy is 15 to 20 years off. Kind of the cart before the storm.

Expect to pay 15-20% more for the hybrid, a skyrocket in your electric bill, a lot of inconvienance. Ever try to charge your battery at home in an hour. 25-30 amps per hour per battery. Multiply that time 8-12 batteries on a daily basis or trickle charge every day at 3-6 amps per battery.

Statistics show that you ae 11 times more likely to die in a headon collision in a small car vs the occupants of a large vehicle. With only one life to live, I am going to be driving the biggest SUV I can find and will never drive a minicrusher.

All of this energy loss is bypassed by simply putting the electricty into the battery.

A plug-in electric car is actually 3-4 times MORE efficient than hydrogen. Hydrogen is a hoax. Less and less people are buying into it.

President Obama has promised 1 million plug-in hybrids by 2015. Not a single mentionof hydrogen – and for good reason.

We no longer have to wait for fuel cells to apply hydrogen to electricity and transport because hydrogen can be used, with minor modification, in existing petrol engines. Bi-fuel conversion allows the internal combustion engine to operate on hydrogen before switching to petrol.

This has to be the pragmatic way forward in developing low carbon transport without the costs of inventing a “fit for purpose” resource hungry, heavy electric battery (a 20th Century solution), or waiting for fuels cells to reduce in cost.

UK’s ITM Power, have invented, patented and developed the technology (an electrolyser) to generate affordable hydrogen, at the point of demand, from renewable or nuclear electricity and water, without the use of toxic materials or harmful emissions.

That said I think swappable batteries, or “Battery switching stations” as BW calls them, is a stupid idea doomed to failure. First we are a long long way off from a standardized battery pack that might be interchangeable between vehicles. Second in the interim having dozens of different battery designs on hand at switching stations is going to be impractical. Once again if you flash forward 20 years maybe then batteries will be generic and swappable but for now it’s pure fantasy. Frankly the “distributed storage” talk is similar fantasy for at least 10 years.

Vehicles owners won’t let their batteries be charge cycled needlessly for the sake of distributed storage, maybe if it’s discharge was just for the benefit of their own home power needs… but not to power their neighbors house. Not until the vehicle owner neither owns nor is responsible for the battery in their vehicle.

People getting excited about swappable batteries or distributed storage in the next few decades is laughable.

1. Driving distances are short.
2. Most traffic was stop-and-go, at rush hour speeds and with much idling (I biked to school, 2 miles away, and always beat a friend who drove),
3. Relatively few people drive more in a day than a good electric car could take you on a charge (the Big Island was larger, but few people lived there),
4. Except at high altitudes, temperatures are warm (we had a “cold” snap that got down to 55^ and a lady in our apartment was worried if her car had enough antifreeze),
5. You didn’t need to worry about taking your car much beyond the city limits,
6. 40 mph was considered pretty fast,
7. Gas and diesel were considerably more expensive than in the mainland,
8. The electric grid didn’t have much call for heating or cooling, that’s for sure.

But that’s Hawaii, not the real world most of us live in. Expensive plug-ins might work well there, but it would be difficult to generalize for the rest of the US.
When we were there, the instability of the volcanic substructure apparenly made geothermal impractical. Wind might work, but people go to Hawaii to look at the scenery, not at wind farms, and the strong currents might be a problem for offshore wind farms.
I wish them luck and hope they learn something we all can use.

Just on a different shell.

Its not the shell its the drivetrain thats imporant.

GO GM!!

NO MORE OIL

The Volt mule’s front end is stopped ahead of the Prius’s.

No race, not a race. Not even a real volt – a volt mule.
Volt hasn’t won anything yet.
In the end Volt may become a better or faster car than the Prius.
But that’s still at least a year away…

Volt wins!

http://gm-volt.com/2008/12/05/volt-one-step-ahead-of-the-prius/

I wonder why Nissan has been “mysteriously absent” from the last few announcements – including the CA project…perhaps they too are catching on to the house of cards built by Shai that will inevitably collapse and do harm to the EV industry.