Basically, it seems that the boot of most electric cars are occasionally empty. (and perhaps even the passenger seats)

What if we can have a large empty battery rack, that we can lift and place in the boot, that would plug into the hybrid via a standardized port for external batteries in the boot.

As each battery are prolly very heavy, and different car have different sized booth, a standard sized 'boot batt cell' are about suitcase sized. The boot batt has a handle, and a battery level check individually; though you can check all of them via pressing a button on the 'rack'.

You load each of these batts into the 'rack', and you can now have instant battery boost!

And since these batteries are done in 'cells', you can replace each cell as it dies(to the original manufacturer for refurbishment), rather than the whole rack. (thus spreading out the cost)

To sweeten up the deal, while you can charge it inside the car... you can also take each 'boot batt cell' out, and place it on a 'charging rack at home. This will be very very useful, especially when batteries become cheap enough, to have plenty of extra batteries left charging at home (or at work).

-------------- Bonus idea: Since these batteries are standardized, you can have large assed rack of these batteries on 'petrol stations', where by swiping your credit cards, you can exchange a specially marked 'boot batt cell' for a fresh one. (Or borrow a new cell)

In addition, these kinds of batt should have additional ports for larger industrial charging sockets.(It means, its slower to charge at home, compared to the petrol station)

To prevent people from abusing these batteries (as petrol stations needs to charge it for the next customers), you do have to place a deposit on it. In addition it has a internal GPS, to prevent theft of the battery, as well as a battery lifetime cycle monitor for quality control.

[as for worries that people would just borrow, and use it for self charging purpose, and rarely return it. You can make it so that people do have to return these batteries after a certain amount of time. And if you make it really convenient to swap batteries, people will pay for it, instead of losing the right for a few extra batteries.]
-- mofosyne, Jul 31 2010

Practical Electric Car Infrastructure Practical_20electri...ar_20infrastructure
[DIYMatt, Jul 31 2010]

See the link to my old idea, which I'm told wasn't very original.
-- DIYMatt, Jul 31 2010


I see...

Perhaps the difference I made with this. Is that it is not a replacement for fuel (battery capacity to the km is still pretty low compared to fuel), but rather augments your existing hybrid energy capacity.

And in the age where every drop of fuel is potentially costing you and arm and a leg. This is useful. Especially for petrol station, as they can transport less fuel under this scheme. (or service more cars)

In addition, each battery has a suitcase sized form factor, that is stacked on top of a removable battery rack on the boot. This is so that we can solve the problem of trying to load all these heavy batteries onto the car. (and also makes it a case of charging individual cells, rather than the whole rack. Which is faster, at the petrol station [they have access to larger power supply lines]. Thus helping to reduce under supply issues.)
-- mofosyne, Aug 01 2010


All good ideas, but finally your used batteries are shipped out to places where you don't see how much environmental damage is done during the processing.
-- Ling, Aug 01 2010


At least there are paragraph breaks and commas.
-- kaz, Aug 02 2010


Disappointing... I thought this was a way for passers-by to respond to the ugly design of the average hybrid car by modifying the shape of the boot in a semi-formal / documented fashion.
-- jamobaker, Aug 03 2010



random, halfbakery