Electric car charging station debuts in Israel

Posted By Joshua Keating Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - 1:55 PM Share

Very cool news out of Tel Aviv where Project Better Place, a company working to develop electric car charging stations, demonstrated a plug-in charging post yesterday. Better Place has been contracted to set up the posts throughout Israel and will soon expand its service to Denmark and Australia. Using these posts, drivers will be able to charge their cars through sockets like the one shown above.

For more on this exciting project, check out Wired's excellent profile of Better Place founder Shai Agassi.

Photo: David Silverman/Getty Images

EXPLORE:ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, ISRAEL/PALESTINE, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
 
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KIDZIB

4:50 PM ET

December 9, 2008

could easily go bust...

it seems to me that in order for electric battery swap stations to replace gas/petrol stations, the entire electric car industry will have to agree to conform to a single type of battery that is available at the charging stations. it would be madness for the consumer to have to locate one of dozens of different types of batteries every time he or she pulls up to a station. the process has to be simple swap-n-go or else it will never take off.

for the same reason, it seems as though one of the other major auto manufacturers could decide to establish a rival charging station that only services the special electric batteries used in their cars and those of their subsidiaries. obviously better place's prospects will be limited if only Nissan is on board...

nevertheless, i have been following this company for quite a while and look forward to seeing where they go with this. they certainly have powerful and influential people backing them...

 

GABE

9:10 PM ET

December 9, 2008

Where does it say anything

Where does it say anything about swapping batteries? I thought this was a charging post, and the Bloomberg article seems to confirm it?

If it's simply recharging, you can bet that the cars and charging posts will be outfitted with the already-standardized home country's plug, possibly with adapters for international travel where applicable (obviously not needed in North America).

Is there really any other way it could work, especially if plug@home is going to be a feature of the cars?

 

KIDZIB

4:54 AM ET

December 10, 2008

read the wired article

the plug-in feature is a key component, but you would be doing the plug-in from your home or office parking spot and need lots of time for a full recharge. the other key component is to have special "charge stations" (which would presumably replace today's gas stations), where you would pull in to a Jiffy Lube-ish garage when you need a recharge but don't have enough time to wait around, and they would swap your current car battery for a new fully-recharged one in roughly 5 minutes.

the plug-in option seems difficult because i would think that plugging something into your car in a public area would put you and the charging station at risk of vandalism or tampering. the swap option just seems overly complicated and labor-intensive. but i remain hopeful that this all works out. nevertheless, we should remember that Better Place has only one operable car and zero charging stations so far. They're still a ways away from launching this project full blast...

 

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