So I'm wondering what your thoughts are about solutions for electric assisted or fully electric powered vehicles. Sure they're great for short trips into town for work or school, but they're not so great if you want to go on a road trip.
So what I'm thinking is that they need to come up with exchangeable batteries. I guess it would work a lot like propane tanks. You pull into the fuel station when your battery is low, pop your battery out of your vehicle, pay a few dollars, and exchange your low battery for a fully charged one that you can pop back into your vehicle and be off!
The batteries could even be recharged using renewable energy resources like wind.
Now, I have no idea the amount of wind power would be needed to charge a battery for a 2 or 3 person small vehicle... but I'm sure that some of you out there have thought about it or already have it figured out.
So... what are your thoughts?
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Charging the batteries in an electric car is really not much of an issue. Road trips aren't much of an issue either.
I've said it before and I'll say it again... the problem isn't the fuel, the problem is the car itself.
However, if you want to go down this line of thinking, here are a few things. Battery exchange schemes have been proposed for years and years. They are a workable solution.
So are electrolyte replacements in the batteries. Look up "zinc air battery" sometime. Lots of schemes out there.
AC Propulsion ( http://www.acpropulsion.com/ ) demonstrated a small generator / fuel tank that was external to the car... towed behind on a small trailer. It was very sophisticated and was demonstrated to work flawlessly on long road trips. That way 95% of the time for normal urban driving they were pure electric... then the once a month when they wanted to take a road trip they'd turn it into a hybrid.
When you start talking about electric cars, be sure to think about where you REALLY get your electricity.
This post of mine might be interesting to you:
http://crystal-visions.blogspot.com/2007/01/evolution.html
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