Couple of months back, I wrote a blog post about the electric charging stations network proposed by the California start up company Better Place. Better Place has a plan to put electric charging station to charge the battery of a pure electric car. Just like a conventional car stopping by the pump station to fuel up.

One of the drawback of pure electric vehicle (EV) is the drive mileage. A Do It Yourself (DIY) electric car may have a drive mileage of approximately 100 – 150 miles before you have to recharge the battery. Even the high end EV such as the Tesla Roadster has a drive mileage of approximately 220 miles. Can you use an EV for long driving trip? To make that a reality, we need facilities to recharge the batteries of an electric car.

Batter Place went out trying to solve that problem. Their idea is to build battery replacement / switching station. The concept is to drive your electric car to one of these station, drop off the discharged battery and a new charged battery pack will be installed in your car. The whole process takes less than 2 minutes. Sounds like science fiction? Check out the video below.

From the looks of it, the battery switching station only works for certain electric car model with specially design battery storage bay at the bottom of the car. I don’t think the setup will work for a homemade electric car. I guess electric car enthusiasts would have to wait for a battery technology breakthrough for the means to extend the EV drive mileage.

Related web sites:
1) Convert 2 EV and Electricity 4 Gas Guides Review – Top Electric Car Conversion Kit Manuals

2) Shai Agassi, Better Place CEO, Speaks Inspiration

3) Tangible Evidence of a Better Place

4) Better Place -Pioneering the Planet’s Electric Car Infrastructure

5) Is Project Better Place the big answer?

Better Place, a California start up company is proposing to set up a large network of electric charging posts in Israel, Denmark, Australia, California and Hawaii.

This is definitely a good news on the development of the electric car for the masses. The current challenge for electric vehicle is its mileage per charge. With these electric charging posts, EV users can drive a further distance hence making EV more practical.

I have been thinking. Will DIY electric car users able to use these electric charging posts?

From the information that I’ve gathered from the web, Better Place has tied up with Renault-Nissan to develop the electric car. No doubt the electric car from Renault-Nissan will be expensive to lease or purchase.

It will be great if Better Place charging post can be used by DIY electric car. However, from the looks of it, there may be some techical and safety issues in doing that. Nonetheless, the electric car is slowly but surely gaining it’s foothold on the transport industry.

Check out other related blog posts on Better Place electric charging infrastrucutre:

Better Place Unveils Design and Deployment of Charging Spot and Electric Parking Lots in Israel – Better Place Israel introduced its first “plugged-in” parking lots as well as the charging spot design that will be used in Better Place deployments around the world. Better Place Israel CEO Moshe Kaplinsky unveiled the charging spot at the Cinema City parking lot in Pi-Glilot…

Is Project Better Place the big answer? – Shai Agassi has the potential to shake up how cars are powered and sold. But how cohesive is his vision? Coming from the perspective of a design analyst, the first thing I would say is that Agassi isn’t really a transportation visionary, though he is an energy visionary. The downside of a single sense of purpose entrepreneur is that they start to believe theirs is the only solution that matters…

Better Place, New Deal Design to bring Electric Car Infrastructure to Bay Area by 2012 – A few weeks ago, it was announced that Palo Alto-based startup, Better Place, had secured a deal to outfit California’s Bay Area with a $1 Billion network of charging and exchange stations by 2012…