California to play home to Better Place solar-powered EV battery switching stations

We’ve come across Better Place’s solar-powered electric vehicle battery switching stations before. Bay Area California will now play home to some of these too, all thanks to a $6.9 million, three-year project. San Francisco and San Jose will have four battery swap stations and 61 electric taxi cabs that you could flag down. All this will be operated by local cab companies Yellow Cab and Yellow Checker Cab. The switch station operates by using a contraption that simply swaps old drained-out EV batteries for charged-up fresh ones. All this is done in the same time it would take to fill up a tank of gas, and that too with the help of solar power!. This certainly is a quicker way to have the cabs up and running when out of charge instead of plugging them into EV chargers and waiting hours for them to juice up.

The switching and swapping of electric vehicle batteries sure makes the whole EV concept a lot more feasible to use, especially when it comes to fleets like taxicabs. A smart and innovative move to help turn our roads greener and cleaner, we sure as hell can’t stop smiling with news like this!
[Fastcompany]