View Single Post
Old 10-16-2012, 09:15 PM   #10
Turbo Ghost
Movie Star
 
Turbo Ghost's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kingsport, TN.
Moto: KLR650
Posts: 682
Default

That's the way the MotoCysz (sp?) motorcycle is designed. There are several batteries and they come out like briefcases and the fresh ones slide back in.
The way I envision the best design is for the bottom of the car (the portion between the wheels) to be like a giant drawer with several sections. Let's say 10 sections. You drive your car to the station and pull-up to the island. You front tires will be stopped in a dip so you are positioned properly. An automatic signal (Bluetooth maybe) gives your vehicle information to the island robot. It then will reach out and remove the cells that need replacing and install new ones. Every car would have the same cell design with a few variations on width due to the varying widths of cars. However, the rectangular dimensions would all be the same. If a car is longer, it simply gets more cells to make the length. Imagine a Twix candy bar shape. The length would be the only thing that might be different to fit each vehicle but, the dimensions when looking at the end would never change.
The benefits would be the ability to travel greater distances and the majority of the weight will be as low as possible so, the vehicles will have greater stability.
The hard part would be the initial start-up. You would have to start out with maybe a dozen station at key points on major highways or possibly at points within major cities like Chicago, NY, LA, etc. Then, as manufacturers make more vehicles, more stations could be opened. It's no different than the way the gasoline engine and its' supply-chain grew. The big difference is we grew with the gas stations but, the Swap-Stop (My idea! I'm copyrighting it!) will have to catch-up to us.
Turbo Ghost is offline   Reply With Quote