Have I solved our energy problems with a simple idea?

Question

Could there be new business opportunities for service stations that would exchange run down batteries for fully charged batteries in electric cars. ----Could these batteries be charged by solar panels mounted on canopies?

What problems do you see with this idea?

Answer 1

Trot off to the library and sit down with some old Popular Science/Popular Mechanics magazines from the 1970's, and the 1930's, and perhaps earlier.  You'll see dozens of articles about electric cars and the bold new battery designs that are just about to be revealed.  After about the twenty-third one, you'll begin to get skeptical about any claim having to do with storage batteries.  

Solar technologies and storage battery technologies are very slow to develop.  Electronics--communications and computers--is an exception; most improvements come at the speed of, say, floor coverings or vacuum cleaners: they're better, but not radically so.

Answer 2

Yes. I'm amazed at how fast the technologies are improving, and how the costs are coming down.

Your idea seems practical, and would involve little waste, with smaller investments than any ideas I've heard so far.

Many people have come to realize that fuel cells will never match the promises some dreamers have made.

Solar charged batteries seem to be the way of the realists.

Hope the right people listen to you.

Answer 3

Good thinking.  It takes a bit of time to fill gas tanks.  It ought to be similar or less to exchange a battery.  Get your suppliers lined up.  You would do well.  A new lighter weight battery is being worked up.  It looks very promising.  The charge lasts longer also.  The company is ?Jaboo?  It was started as a battery for military weapons.

Answer 4

There are limits to the rate of power that you can capture with solar panels and put into batteries.  Photovoltaic ells - solar panels that produce electricity - are currently rather expensive.  You could probably do this now with a small business loan.  If electric cars became mainstream, you would probably have to get some power off of the electrical grid.  If people are coming in at a fast rate to drop off dead batteries and pick up new ones, you'll probably get behind on charged batteries being available.  You would likely need a large amount of spares in order to keep enough batteries there long enough to charge and still let people take as many as they need (in the future if electric is mainstream).  

  There are a lot of nay sayers.  We will only know if this is a great idea once someone tries it and is very dedicated to it.  In 1903 Ford made the first mass produced cars.  Few people had them.  Someone thought they had a great idea to put a big tank in the ground and pump gas for people for money.  Other people told them that's a dumb idea because big tanks and metered pumps are expensive and no one has cars.  Yeah, whatever, now look how things are.

Answer 5

New batteries, standardized, receptor panels in cars, all alike.

A car pulls in to an exchange station, out comes the standardized used battery and in goes the charged ones for a small fee.

I object to oil companies having anything to do with the process, they are having their way with us we don't to reward them with being involved in any way with technology they have nothing to do with.

I do favor Leavenworth for oil company executives and the politicians they own, after a fair trial, of course.

The young male can do without his gas guzzling "performance car" and go to the library, maybe mankind might benefit from this forced change in human behavior.

Answer 6

that's the way its done on electric fork lifts in factory's, you run on one battery pack while the other is charging.

one  problem with doing that with privately owned cars is you may have a new battery & the one you exchange it for at the station after a hundred miles may be 3 years old & worn out.

another problem is they have to weigh around half a ton to give any range & they cost thousands of dollars.

we need a totaly new type of battery technology or cheaper fuel cells to make long range electric cars practical.

keep thinking though, at least your trying to think of a solution instead of just complaining.

the whole problem is we have never had a way to actually STORE electricity at normal temperatures & we still dont.

batterys change chemical energy to electrical energy & the process is reversed to recharge the chemicals. a lot of energy is lost in both process's

I repeat, keep thinking!

Answer 7

First of all none of this is financially feasible.  Batteries to run and electric car run into the thousands and solar panels have never been nor will they be financially relevant for a commercial venture.  This would also mean that electric cars would have to be redesigned with the battery cradle open to the top and the station would have to have  a hydraulic lift as these batteries are ridiculously heavy.  

You have solved nothing.