electric cARS REDUX

Excellent article in this months WIRED magazine on the future of electric cars. An organization called Better Place figures that the typical American driver geta 20mpg and for 15,000 miles per year it cost $3,000 a year at $4 per gallon. He believes he can sell you enough clean wind and solar power to run your vehicles for $1050 a year. Shai Agassi is testing his cars now in Israel and Denmark. Denmarks largest utility DONG has signed a deal with Better Place as a way to rid themselves from its oil addiction, save its carbon e,issions, and use the car batteries to bank the power from their wind power farms. When the wind blows strong they have excess power that is now given away to Germany and Sweden.
The business model is similar to those of printers: give the printers away cheap and make the money on the refills. In this case discount the cars significantly and make your money back on the batteries and recharges. An onboard computer will track your mileage and calculate how much energy you will need, to get to work, for instance. At work you can plug your car in for recharging if necessary. The computer will tell you when the charge is low and when going longer disatances you could just switch out your battery for a fully-charged one at any service station.