Topic: Shai Agassi Changes Transportation.

[Cortina]

Interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfGEbTcNuzA

And

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmOW0z__AMI&NR=1

[EV Dan]

Cool. Sounds very much doable, well, except the battery swap stations. Just takes one bright fella and soon people wont have to die of lung deceases. Kudos. 

[mmret]

Swap stations are going to be tricky by their very nature, especially in Canada (low population density).

The two car thing I can see however...I guess it will slowly build up starting from the Hamilton-GTA-401-Montreal line.

If they can do 300km range and under 5 minutes to swap, ~4hr for full charge...there's hope. But still a technical challenge. And then there's the economic challenge. This will be mega bucks. His numbers are obviously optimistic.

And then in 25 years everyone will whine about how the chemicals in old batteries are killing the rainforest.

[EV Dan]

The thing with swaps is nobody having bought a new car and a new battery will want to do it. Why swap a new battery to a used one, even if technically its on a lease? They are gonna have to put bigger batteries in, 200k being a reasonable range for an everyday use car. For longer trips there will always be conventional rentals.
Charging time will be least of ppls worries if an EV ships with a timer charger. Get home, plug it in, it will start charging at 2 am and be ready for a morning commute. Even easier than a gas station and hopefully cheaper overall too.

[Cortina]

The thing with swaps is nobody having bought a new car and a new battery will want to do it. Why swap a new battery to a used one

I don't think that will be an issue. looks like you will never have access to the battery. All your care about is that the car will get you were you want to go or the next battery station. 

At least will we be free from oil driven cars. Although We won't be free from oil. because we use oil for a lot of other things beside fueling cars.

[tpl]

The milage per charge thing for electric cars is a bit of a red herring IMO.

In most of suburban/urban Canada... where the people live.. the important criterion should be:

How long can the car sustain lights and heater at -20 while moving slowly and how long can the battery provide power to an air conditioner and the motor at +30.  I.e. what kind of rush hour performance can the car be guaranteed to give.    I can imagine the total chaos if say 20% of cars just dies in a TO traffic jam on a cold winters evening or a jam on the QEW on a hot summers day... madness!

[mmret]

Good point tpl....perhaps we can start measuring things in MJ or kWhr and just compare the battery vs. extractable energy from 50L of gasoline

[EV Dan]

Most countries base mileage estimates on real driving conditions, so in Israel I dont see how they would design an EV without taking an Air in consideration.
In Canada they can always put a motor controller under the driver seat so heating we shall have 
But seriously there will be a lot of hot things under the hood so maybe there will be no need for dedicated heating.