Is it just crazy enough to work?

[essentialsaltes]

At a Better Place switch station, the driver enters a lane and proceeds along a switch-lane conveyor. The automated switch platform below the vehicle will align under the battery, initiate the battery release process and lower the battery from the vehicle. It will then replace the depleted battery with a fully-charged battery. The depleted battery is placed in a storage room and recharged to be available to other drivers. The process is completed in just a few minutes, while the driver remains in the car, providing a fast and convenient range-extension solution.

Comments

[freudinshade.livejournal.com]

The main issue I can see is with battery quality/aging/charge levels. You would't be getting batteries back that are exactly the same as yours. You'd have to have some kind of guarantees from the charging stations which would have to rigorously test the batteries after each swap to keep up with that (or, if you have some kind of brand lock in, the batteries could be instrumented so that they continously self test, in which case they'd have to keep precise track of who swapped each battery set or you'll have a cottage industry in tweaking the instrumentation to represent that you're turning in better batteries than you are...)