I agree about sunk versus new costs, of course, but if you’d have stood next to Henry Ford’s production line and said, you know, 100 years from now we’re going to have spent a few trillion dollars keeping these things running, people would have stuck to their horses.
I believe Better Place estimate the cost of kitting out the whole US at around the number you quote.
Agreed about gas station throughput but you’re missing the main point: the model works when most people, most of the time drive under the single range of the car and can thus avoid battery swaps altogether. Based on my real world driving I believe I took 15 trips in the last year that would have needed one or more swaps. The rest of the time I would be fine topping up at home, at night. And I can already see many public parking places at shopping centres and other public places putting in charge spots. Even an hour or two can significantly extend daily range without taxing the battery swap network.
And I think this range can only improve: who knows maybe a fuel cell will become practical and fit in the same package shape as the battery: suddenly I’ll own a fuel cell car!
Israel is about as short on real estate as it’s possible to be, but we’ve still got enough, outside the urban centres there is usually land adjacent to existing gas stations partly because nobody wants to spend time in these places!
I also agree that the US is not the place to start this project and, clearly, Better Place agree. And if it is just suitable for urban yuppies, so be it, if it can switch down the use of crude by a few percent its good. If the question is which alternative to Arab dominated crude oil should we use for personal transport, my answer is anything and everything!
