This is great news. Better Place is planning on making Australia the third country to be setup with its Electric Car Network. Its really exciting as it does something Ive been advocating for many years:
They will setup recharging stations every 40km or so bewteen Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane and have fast switchover modular packs for compliant electric cars. So in town you might just recharge while you are at work, but on a long trip you will just quick swap the packs. The current tech gives about a 200km range between charges. But im sure this will be improved, especially if the Chevy Volt becomes compliant with this tech. Manufactureres have to get onboard and develope a standard for switching the packs and the type of plugs in use. Leadership is needed in this area.
This means you simply pull in (and quicker then you normally refill, ) get a new battery pack swapped in. You will lease this technology depending on how far you drive. The big electric companies in australia are partnering with Better Place to provided renewable electricity to these refill locations.
More from Carpoint:
Australia has been chosen as the next country to pioneer EV infrastructure by US green corporation, Better PlaceGreen transport campaigner, Better Place, has announced it will build an electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure network Down Under. The announcement from the Palo Alto (California) based company was made in Melbourne late last month, in conjunction with AGL Energy and Macquarie Capital Group.
According to Better Place, Australia is the next cab off its EV infrastructure rank, after Denmark and Israel. It says it will partner with the Macquarie Capital Group to assist the raising of $A1 billion of capital to build and deploy the network, while AGL will provide “zero-carbon” electricity (power generated via renewable means).
Better Place CEO and Founder, Shai Agassi, said that Australia had been chosen to prove the organisation’s ideas about EV transportation networks could be scaled. In announcing the infrastructure plans he said Australia could be a test case for networks in the USA and UK.
Thi is a fantastic idea and one of the first steps in re-inventing our transport system away from fossil fuel dependence.