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Originally Posted by Generalx5
The theory is that instead of having gas stations, there will be a charge station, batteries stored on charging racks ready to go. You may just one day pull into a charging station and exchange a battery or two in about two minuts and be on your way.
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I don't think you can just "exchange a battery or two" capable of powering a car for quite a distance without first
eating an enormous amount of spinach. Even if they were lithium-based, batteries capable of powering a car will most likely weigh on the order of a few hundred pounds.
The only way in which electric cars will be successful and gain a sizable market share is when they cost less than $30,000 and have a 200+ mile range per charge cycle. A lot of people own more than one car, and I'm sure these would be the kind of people who would buy an electric car as their second/commuting car.
Now if we want the electric car to be able to take over the primary car role, we need to get super-capacitor technology cheap enough for mass production in cars. (Batteries don't have high enough energy density, and the whole idea of using hydrogen fuel cells to power cars is a boondoggle). But with super-capacitors, we can have electric cars that can recharge in only a few minutes - literally just as fast as refilling the tank.
The technology for this already exists. In Shanghai, China, there are two bus routes which use electric super-capacitor buses. The buses are electric, and at every bus stop an "electric umbrella" recharges the super-capacitors on the bus. Now there is still a lot of progress to be made in the area of super-capacitors, but the trends so far are promising.
As long as there are sufficient recharging facilities available, using an electric super-capacitor car would be no different than driving an internal combustion one. With the price of gas forever stuck on the upward spiral, renewable energy sources slowly becoming more widespread, and with environmental sustainability increasing in importance, super-capacitor technology is one way which we can have fully electric cars without sacrificing features we've grown accustomed to having.