Battery-swap system to lead charge for electric cars

THE first commercial trial of a battery-swapping system for electric cars that will be coming to Australia within 18 months is under way in Japan.

THE first commercial trial of a battery-swapping system for electric cars that will be coming to Australia within 18 months is under way in Japan.

Three electric vehicle taxis began operating in Tokyo yesterday, starting a 90-day trial of the Better Place battery-switch system, an answer to what until now has been the biggest stumbling block for commercialising electric cars - their relatively short range.

The latest lithium-ion batteries can drive an EV about 160km before needing a full recharge, which takes about six hours.

But Tokyo's biggest taxi firm, Nihon Kotsu, needs its cabs to travel an average of 360km during a 10-hour day.

The automated switching station system pioneered by the California-based company Better Place, which swaps a depleted battery for a fully charged unit inside a minute, is the best solution available yet, Nihon Kotsu president Ichiro Kawanabe said yesterday.

Known in the Japanese media as the "Taxi Prince", Mr Kawanabe is the youthful third-generation head of the family business that will operate the cabs for the Tokyo project.

"If we can, we want to change all the taxis in Tokyo over to EV," he said yesterday. "And at the moment, battery-switch is the best technology to do that."

With 60,000 taxis, Tokyo has more cabs than London, Paris and New York combined.

Taxi work is the most demanding use of passenger vehicles, so the battery-switch project could be the catalyst for mass-market acceptance of electric vehicles.

In developed urbanised countries, taxis constitute about 2 per cent of the national vehicle fleet, but cause about 20 per cent of vehicle emissions, according to Better Place.

"Since our initial announcement of this project, we've heard from cities all around the world interested in converting their taxi fleets as a concrete way to fight CO2 emissions and urban pollution," said Better Place Japan president Kiyotaka Fujii.

"Electric taxis are a pragmatic step forward for governments as well as a lucrative segment in the electrification of transport."

Canberra is among the vanguard cities for the new system. Better Place Australia, headed by the technology entrepreneur and former Victorian MP Evan Thornley, will begin rolling out an integrated system of switching stations and battery charging points in Canberra and southern NSW late next year.

A national Better Place system will be deployed in Israel next year, followed by Denmark and major Australian cities in 2012.