Japan taps Better Place for electric car charging

Japan's Ministry of the Environment announced a program on Tuesday to test electric vehicles and a network of charging stations, some supplied by auto start-up Better Place.

The electric vehicle feasibility study will give local governments access to 50 electric cars for several months. Cars included are Mitsubishi Motors' iMiev, the Plug-in Stella from Subaru, the Honda Clarity fuel-cell vehicle, and the Erezo electric motorbike under development.

Better Place will install battery exchange stations in the trial. The deal in Japan is similar to those made recently with several countries, the city of San Francisco, and the state of Hawaii that have signed on with Better Place, which has developed a system to accelerate electric car use through battery leasing and automated swapping.

The trial is part of Japan's national goal of having electric cars make up half of all new vehicle sales by 2020. The program will also include a facility for rapid car battery charging.

Automakers say they need an infrastructure, such as charging stations in public places, for their electric car programs to take hold.

The first electric versions of familiar sedans from the likes of Nissan and others will start becoming available in 2010, but they will largely be used for testing. Broader availability of these cars will be in 2011 and 2012.

[Fherghaile]

The handling of thousands of battery packs at one location alone would be a logistics nightmare. Also batteries have a limited life span and the potential for pollution from batteries is gigantic. Given how badly we've done with the internal combustion engine, why would the by-products of electric cars be any different? Battery driven cars are only the changing of one demon for a potentially larger and more dangerous demon. Electricity may be the answer, batteries are not.

[freemarket--2008]

Do you have graduate degrees in both electrical engineering and chemistry? What are you basing your statements on other than irrational fear and ignorance?

Lithium-ion batteries can be recycled. Thousands of batteries will not be needed at each site since they will constantly be recharging and installing batteries. Any that are too old to recharge will be shipped to a recycling facility.

Apparently, the engineering and business model seem to have been worked out since many customers are already lining up.

[ferretboy88]

I guess we will all have to ride bikes to the coffee shops. They don't like Hydrogen, Wind Mills, Battteries.