Taxi Driver Online

Electric Taxis With Switchable Batteries Debut in Japan

Tokyo Electric Taxi Project Entrance to the battery switch station. Better Place

There are currently more than 60,000 taxis cruising around Japan, a number that accounts for 20 percent of the country's CO2 emissions. To promote environmental health, the Japanese government has joined with Better Place, a US firm specializing in electric vehicle development, to come up with a solution: electric taxis powered by replaceable batteries. Today, three of the taxis will begin their circuit during a 90-day experiment funded by Japan's energy agency.

In a blog entry written for Better Place's website, Kiyota Fujii, president of the firm's Japan unit, explains how the vehicles run continuously. Unlike many other EVs, which need long recharging periods after half a day's work, Better Place's taxis can make periodic stops at battery-exchanging stations. It takes less time to switch the batteries than it does to fill a conventional vehicle with gasoline.
Nihon Kotsu, Japan's largest taxi operator, has also partnered up with Better Place to provide drivers for the vehicles. Fujii said that he is certain that the city's experiment will encourage automakers around the world to follow suit by producing eco-friendly, economically-sustainable vehicles en masse.


http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2010 ... ebut-japan

I wonder if this could be the answer to battery powered Taxis.I think the idea is very could and would solve the problem of how many miles you can get of a full battery charge and the length of time it takes to charge battery.

The Best Idea yet...Be an easy solution..not much Different to refuelling your vehicle except that you just unclick an empty fuel reserve and click a new one into place in seconds.

Certainly it would make for an interesting filling station of the future where you can just drive in to a bay and have everything lined up by lasers then an automated fuel cell/battery switching machine could have you on your way in minutes and then have the flat batteries recharged automatically for another vehicle.

I wonder how much that would work out at per recharge, and every Battery station would need to keep a few hundred batteries in various states of charge at any given time...still...took a long time for petrol pumps to be introduced as petrol used to be sold only in a drum through the local chemists..

I suppose bigger companies could have their own Changing stations and save even more money...failing that a group of like minded individuals could start up a refuelling ring for their own use..

Still..motor manufacturers like phone manufacturers would each use a Different battery type to help sell their own brand of power..unless governments regulate and standardise the battery specs..

Great Idea..

Could work but if the government give the go ahead they will tax and vat it to the hilt
batteries could be charged from a wind farm for free, instead of building a new power station

Only snag is Skip..these Horizontal wind Helicopters are half way up bloody hillsides...It'd need a hell of an extension cable to reach the roadside.

How comes we got hundreds of the damn things all over the shop here and we are still paying huge bucks for our leccy.
Each ones supposed to Power a 1000 houses or so and if we have around 200+ of them then we should be powering around 200,000 homes in the borders....yet their is only around 25,000 houses in the whoule borders region and 100,000 people.
By rights we are generating 4 times as much leccy as we use...so why aint it a quarter of the price....As a little sweetner for having the ugly brutes spread thicker than a forest all over the shop.??

No idea why we are not getting cheaper lecy unless they still need to re-coupe there outlay
all that would be required is a small wind generator on the roof of the building that you get your exchange battery from.
You could always carry a larger version of a wined up phone charger in the boot and get the punters to turn the handle

what about a dynamo on a rear wheel, like I had on my bike (back in the day)

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My heart is heavy, but my consience clear,
I voted Yes, without any fear.

A taxi coupled to the windmill in the middle of Lowestoft wouldn't get very far.Nicknamed 'never go round' it spends more time impersonating the Angel of the North than providing electricity.
I wonder how many of these stupid things there would be if there wasn't so much money slung at them in the form of grants,hardly any,I expect.

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Selling Imperial tools for old cars.

Id guess there would be none of them if they werent state subsidised...they are so expensive to produce and highly inefficient.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/feb/26/sciencenews.renewableenergy

We need more nuclear energy power stations built....and fast!!!!!!!

Nuclear energy,the same energy that powers the sun.Not natural enough for all the greens and eco warriors though,it doesn't come with enough grants.

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Selling Imperial tools for old cars.

If it werent that it'd be some other cause the whining anorchists would be campaigning for..gives them some focus to their meaningless lives between trips to the post office to cash their Giros..






Your bang on the money..its bugger all to do with any green issues other than the colour of greenbacks.

a cynic would say HMG get so much by way of vat and duty off fuel why would they want it to end?

with development a battery can be charged from a variety of sources, solar, wind, mains, genny, KERS, etc, i pay £300 a month for fuel, half of that goes to HMG (at least), so thats £3000 a year (i only do 10 months)

if i went electric, and so did 5 million others thats £15 BILLION lost to the treasury (and MPs expenses)

the oil companies would lose out by the same amount


simples

i bet you need a licence...


when we lived in snowdonia i looked at buying a house right by a fast running brook/stream, i considered a water wheel coupled to a generator for free power...

hahaha

welsh water wanted me to pay for "abstracting" the water, which fell from the sky, would run through my land, into thier river, but id have to pay

what for one of these....................



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it'd have to be bigger obviously as I doubt if this would power the sidelights, nevermind the whole car

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My heart is heavy, but my consience clear,
I voted Yes, without any fear.

Your joking surely?

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