Better Place extends Tokyo EV taxi trial

Electric vehicle power and infrastructure company Better Place is extending its electric taxi trial in Tokyo by three months, from September 1 until the end of the year.

The company has run trial program in cohorts with Tokyo taxi company Nihon Kotsu and Japan's Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry.

Better Place describes the four-month first phase of the pilot program, just completed, as "the first real-world assessment of electric vehicle battery performance under heavy driving conditions and different charging patterns."

The company sees it as vital in looking into driver behaviour in real-world conditions using the switchable battery technology central to its business model. Another three months, it says, will allow it to "further evaluate and optimise the design and integration of the components of the system including the battery switch station (BSS), the EV taxis, battery performance and charging as well as driver behaviour and consumer acceptance."

The trial to date has seen Nihon Kotsu's three-unit EV taxi fleet carrying 3020 passengers a total 40,311 km. Drivers visited the Better Place switch station 2122 times.

The program sees each vehicle monitored in detail for position, battery power remaining and operating temperature, helping the company fine tune and optimise power-pack management.

By Better Place's logic, battery swapping stands to overcome a number of the problems facing EVs as an everyday drive proposition. It has the potential to give the vehicles almost unlimited range, and dispenses with problems of charging times, with a swap transaction taking less time than a petrol fill -- an average 59.1 seconds in the trial to date.

Part of the rationale for the trial extension lies in the value of the contribution it stands to make in the rollout of Better Place charge networks Australia, Denmark and its native Israel. The local rollout will begin in Canberra in mid-late 2011.