Better Place Battery-swap Station Gets Real in Israel (video)

Project Better Place keeps making waves, having recently announced partnerships with Renault and expansion into Denmark.  With all the news and progress being made, Better Place certainly seems legit, but perception often lags reality, and some of our readers have left comments questioning whether Better Place’s business model had any legs.

As if answering in the affirmative, Project Better Place’s Israeli facility released this video of the battery swapper in action, effectively “topping off” the electric car with a simple swipe of a card in about the same time it would take to top-off a conventional ICE car.  The stations themselves are designed to be modular in construction, and compatible with several different EVs – although they are presumably leaning heavily towards batteries powering Renault/Nissan’s EVs.

The Truth About Cars blog reports that 8 more Better Place battery-swap stations are currently in construction, and the company hopes to eventually have 40 similar stations operational throughout Israel.  Shai Agassi, the company’s CEO, says “you’re seeing the second Apple” in the video above … which may or may not mean that he plans to follow in Steve Job’s footsteps.

Source:  The Truth About Cars.

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