[Edited due to [MaxB]'s anno] Each battery is a type of small car. Each battery connects to the next and relays the information on. A battery that is empty will move aside to allow the other batteries to participate in running the electric vehicle that hosts them.
When at station the empty batteries pull out and new full ones drive into the battery storage space. No special station needed , just a storage and charging site. You slowly pay back for the batteries simply by using them, as you pay for the power. Since nighttime off peak charge can be as low as 20 times the cost of gasoline (and less) you will get your revenue back pretty quickly.
For trucks use carsize battery units. For cars use matchbox type batteries.-- pashute, Sep 22 2014 Battery swapping stations for electric cars are baked, sorry.-- Spacecoyote, Sep 22 2014 I think the idea here is that the entire car is swapped. (//Each battery is a type of car.//)
However, this would be a nuisance since (a) you'd have to move your luggage, children, CDs, kidnap victims etc between cars each time and (b) you'd have no choice over what type of car you drove.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 22 2014 I don't know why it's not taken even further, and swap the people too. It seems crazy when you look at a motorway, there are hundreds of people zooming eastbound and hundreds more zooming westbound. If everyone was more agreeable, the people in the east could stay there and do the things that the eastbound people are heading for; those eastbound people could stay in the west and do the things the westbound people were intending to. It would save a lot of zooming around.-- pocmloc, Sep 22 2014 Nah, it's cheaper to have the nice people in India do those things instead.-- Spacecoyote, Sep 22 2014 The title you intended is 'Drive-In Batteries'. The hyphen is a strange mistress, no?-- Alterother, Sep 23 2014 Does the Good Fairy Jenny know that you keep strange mistresses?-- normzone, Sep 23 2014 dash!
Sorry. Meanwhile just to re-iterate. In the intended-idea, the batteries drive into a "bridge" that leads to the storage aria (Edit: meant 'area') in the car. Each battery is an autonomous "robot" except without any expensive robot legs and walking control hardware and software. Instead it only has a simple RC car like interface that is controlled either inside battery or centrally at refill station. This is not baked at all. It relies on many very small batteries, "cooperating" with each other.
Makes the station easier to implement, and a universal car "battery tank" implementation, independent of any special "full battery replacement unit" - a little like using liquid fuel.-- pashute, Sep 23 2014 // Does the Good Fairy Jenny know //
She does now ...
// storage aria //
That's only if the battery is fully opera-tional ...-- 8th of 7, Sep 23 2014 // Does the Good Fairy Jenny know that you keep strange mistresses? //
She does. My actual mistress is named Jessica; while the wife is asleep, Jessica and I share glass after glass of Kijafa while I hunch over her, feverishly groping at her keyboard and gazing into her deeply hypnotic 19" HILED display.-- Alterother, Sep 24 2014 changed to "like {a small} car"
added "to participate {in running the electric vehicle that hosts them}"-- pashute, Oct 01 2014 random, halfbakery