Electric Cars with Better Place in "Transportation Islands"

Here's a cool transportation company: Better Place -- The Global Provider of Electric Vehicle Networks and Services. Better Place is a worldwide team of automakers, battery manufacturers, energy companies, and governments that are creating a reliable and financially reasonable alternative to gasoline powered cars.

A problem with electric cars now is that the cars cannot travel long distances without several lengthy re-charge sessions. Better Place's answer: they have better batteries that they will swap out for your battery in a quick session.

Here are the pros:

1. Subscription Battery Replacement Service: It's like a cell-phone service where you can pay a monthly rate to use their network and replace your battery.

2. Vehicle to Grid Integration: Renewable *good* energy is inconsistent (the wind stops blowing, the sun stops shining) so their batteries can store that *good* energy and contribute back to the electric grid.

3. Branded Drive-tones: Again, like cell phones. Electric cars are silent, so drivers will need to customize the noise that their cars make for safety purposes.

How does this apply to the taxi world? It's tough to set up a network of battery swap station across a large rural area (like much of the USA), so Better Place focuses on "transportation islands" (like Hawaii, an isolated county like Israel, or a taxi service area). A taxi service area is a "transportation island" because taxis typically pick up or drop off at a particular location within a restricted geographic area. Some taxis only pick up at airports, meaning they are perfect candidates for a battery swap at regular intervals between trips.

Thinking of a taxi operator as confined to a "transportation island" makes alternative forms of energy seem more reasonable -- whether it is an electric grid like Better Place, or another alternative form of fuel (propane, e-85, bio-diesel) located at an airport, taxi dispatching center, or central location.