Electric Avenue

Here's an interesting piece on an electric car some MIT folks are working on.

The team's goal is to build an all-electric car with similar performance capabilities of gasoline-only counterparts, which includes a top speed of about 161 kph, a family sedan capacity, a range of about 320 kilometers and the ability to recharge in about 10 minutes. They hope to complete the project, which they chronicle on their blog, by the third quarter of 2010.

The one drawback that I can see with the electric cars we have to date is that they take a long time to recharge. That's OK if you're going from home to work and back and can recharge overnight, but what if you want to take one of those on the road? You're out of luck unless you can swap out car batteries like you swap out propane tanks; if the car batteries had a user-friendly method of replacing them like a current battery, one could see gas stations have a battery-swap business to cater to long-distance travelers.

However, if you can charge a battery in 10 minutes, not only might truck stops offer recharging stations but restaurants might offer them as well. Gas stations might charge a set amount for a charge, but restaurants might use them as a loss-leader like WiFi is today; get your car recharged as you recharge.

The current technology requires 350KW of juice to recharge things that quick; they need to borrow the MIT power plant to get that kind of voltage. Not everyone has a power-plant at their disposal, but if they can get that down to more manageable levels, we might have the makings of a car that could put the gas station out of business by about 2030.