Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It's shame Neo never came to the UK with their automated battery replacement system.
I'm really not convinced. Permanently installed batteries allow far more flexibility of positioning as well as size - the same reason why phones no longer have an easily removable battery clipped to the back. With fast charging tech there really is no problem here.
Likewise I remember a company - perhaps BMW - who trialled a wireless charging solution with a plate that you drove over and parked. Obviously it must have had terrible efficiency losses and quite large infrastructure costs in for example, car parks.
Inductive charging is a feasible technology, but is just added cost so most people wouldn't pay more for it, and would be very costly to install outside a home which is where most charging will occur.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Of course, we all know that virtually everybody who drives now already has a contactless bank card, or could get one if needed. However, as we know from discussions about cashless payment on buses, having a card and forcing people to use it are two separate things. So I can definitely see controversy in the not too distant future if cash payment isn't an option.
I can't. People will just pay by card. The issue of very poor people living week to week in cash only does not apply to EVs (unlike, say, buses, which are used by the poorest in society) and won't for at least 10 years (as it'll take that long for used EVs to be cheap enough for it to apply), and cash is disappearing, and likely will have disappeared near enough completely on that timescale.
The only problem you might get is those of limited means having chunks of money knocked out due to the preauthorisation, but there are ways around this such as allowing people to specify their maximum before tapping. But that must be seen as so little a problem, as it could be done easily on pay at pump pumps and it isn't done there.
Anyone who is really stuck can just get a prepaid debit card and load it with cash at a PayPoint/PayZone store.