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Saturday September 11, 2010 06:06:11 AM GMT

The Better Place battery swap model, he says, "is egregiously flawed -… the concept of vehicle manufacturers agreeing to any sort of common battery is like herding cats."

Office buildings, utilities, local governments and car park operators are all likely customers for EV charging stations. ECOtality will soon announce a deal to install charge points in gas stations, whose owners are keen to entice EV drivers into their convenience stores.

Other retailers see the logic in the schemes. "Demand is not very high at the moment," says Jack Cunningham, environmental affairs manager at British retailer Sainsbury, which offers free charging to customers. "We take a fairly long-term view that will increase."

But building the huge networks of charge posts that many envisage as the future will not be cheap -- and some experts question the economics of such schemes. In the UK, a single street-side charge post can cost up to 5,000 pounds ($7,700) to install. But with electricity providers making less than 2 pounds per charge, few see the business case for deploying them. "We calculated that the payback was more than 50 years at the current electricity cost in Spain," says Jorge Sanchez Cifuentes, EV project manager at Endesa, a Spanish utility. British power providers voice similar concerns.

"Getting the capex back is a bit of a stumbling block," concedes Calvey Taylor-Haw, founder of UK-based charge spot firm Elektromotive. "You've got to have lots of money from central government."

Cisco's Feisst says state subsidies are the only way to get the infrastructure in place. "If you want to make long-distance drives then you need a public charging infrastructure," he says. "Utilities don't make a lot of money with public charging infrastructure so there must be government support to develop that, especially in the initial years when penetration of EVs is not high."

As governments cut spending in this age of austerity, though, such subsidies are likely to dry up, making a distant dream of plans for a network of systems that offer drivers universal charging with the cost billed back to a single provider.

CHARGE ME, QUICK

Then there's the time factor. Recharging an EV can take up to eight hours, though that is coming down fast.

AeroVironment says it has devised a 50 kilowatt electric charger based on DC electricity which can power a Nissan Leaf in just 26 minutes, though each unit would cost $30-40,000. ECOtality says it can charge a Nissan Leaf to 80 percent full in 15 minutes using its 60 amp fast charger, which will cost $20-25,000 apiece. Better Place switch station hubs will cost about $500,000 to build.

"In my opinion we're talking five to 10 years to have the right battery technology available that can make longer distances and allow faster charging," says Cisco's Feisst. "It's critical to have a fast charging process at public charging stations, and then we don't need to replace the batteries."

Fast chargers have their own problems, according to IDC Energy Insights' Sam Jaffe, potentially damaging batteries and creating intolerable power surges on the grid. "We are extremely sceptical about very-quick charge stations. It's technically feasible but on a large scale it would be very damaging for the grid."

ECOtotality calls that argument "fallacious". But Better Place spokeswoman Julie Mullins agrees and says that's why the swappable battery model will win out: "Our mission is to break dependence on oil and we can't wait 10 years for a better battery."

LESS MAY BE MORE

With all the uncertainty about battery-swap stations and recharging posts, it's not surprising that a growing number of EV backers see a minimalist approach -- charging at home or at the office -- as the best way ahead.

Because of safety concerns around the long, continuous load required to power an EV, carmakers are expected to mandate a home-charging device with every vehicle they sell. Little wonder that companies like Elektromotive, one of Britain's biggest manufacturers of public charging devices, have moved into home-charging stations.

Bethan Carver, Manager of Product Development at EDF Energy, the UK arm of French utility EDF, says the modest initial uptake of electric cars almost ensures most charging will be done at home. "It's more important to develop charging solutions at home or at work. Our view is that only a small fraction of charging demand will take place on the street, a couple of percent ongoing."

HELPING THE ANXIOUS

Of course home-charging won't work for people who live in apartments and have no designated parking space. And there may be another, more curious reason why at least some roadside charge spots will be needed: to alleviate the "range anxiety" that many drivers of electric cars seem to suffer. "People were really apprehensive to drive because there was nowhere to charge," says Mitsubish's Andy Wertheim, of a pilot project in Kanagawa, Japan. But with the addition of a GPS system and even a single quick charging post "it was amazing what happened with how much further people drove."

Nissan has found similar results. People who charged their cars at home at first "go to the areas of Tokyo where there are quick charging points. But because we can track where they're going, as a research activity, bizarrely when they get there they don't charge their cars up. They go back home and recharge at home," says Nissan's Hardcastle.

A SPLIT SOLUTION

In the end, it may be that the electric car market splits in two: urban drivers and fleet operators happy with limited range at low cost in one group, and motorists who want to go further and buy an extended range car in the other. "For the next 20 years I think that will see us through," says Paul Nieuwenhuis from Cardiff's Centre for Automotive Industry Research. "I don't know if battery swap is the answer."

"The fundamental problem of Better Place is it's going to cost so much. Can they raise that amount of capital?" asks Jaffe, adding that he still sees "a lot of intelligence" in the model.

"For me it's a question of timing," says EDF Energy's Bethan Carver. "A lot of the debate so far is on future possibilities."

(With additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Tel Aviv and Chang-Ran Kim in Tokyo; editing by Simon Robinson and Sara Ledwith)

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