Core77

Missing from much of the talk about electric cars has been how to charge them up--"just plug it in" sounds simple enough, but when you're dealing with a 400 pound battery that takes 5 hours to juice up, electric vehicle infrastructure suddenly snaps into focus as a make-or-break part of the picture.

Palo Alto-based startup Better Place has been working on this part of the plug-in car puzzle since 2007; quietly for a while, but lately with some fanfare. Having already secured cooperation and investment to build infrastructure in Israel, Denmark and Australia, a major announcement was made on Nov. 20 that Better Place will be getting to work in its own back yard: the mayors of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose have offered their enthusiastic support for a plan to install a $1 billion network of charging stations and battery-exchange stations throughout the Bay Area by 2012.

Getting the network right, though, turns out to be an enormous task. While the gas station network in the US has been evolving for a century now, the task for Better Place is to build something up from scratch in just a few years. To that end, they've enlisted SF-based industrial design powerhouse New Deal Design to work out the details. New Deal founder Gadi Amit explains that six in-house designers assigned to the project are responsible for "any physical embodiment of the charging spot," a task which he acknowledges may sound trivial, but is in fact "very involved."

The first major manifestation of this network is the charging post (see renderings, above), of which 250,000 are expected to be installed by the completion of the project.

New Deal's approach to these units has been a tricky tight-rope to walk, as they seek a design innocuous enough to blend into a range of urban environments (think mailboxes and parking meters), while still being accessible and intuitive to any driver. The design angle has largely drawn on New Deal's extensive experience with consumer electronics, and will seek to take technology usually associated with industrial technicians in overalls, and recast it in the vocabulary of mobile phones and MP3 players.

The second, much heftier portion of the project is the Battery Exchange Station, designed to allow electric vehicle drivers to quickly switch out the spent 300-400 lb. batteries in their cars for fresh ones, addressing the problem of a multi-hour charge cycle while on a long-distance journey. Gadi describes the concept as a "gas station sized robot" that automates the removal process by engaging the vehicle from beneath with an in-ground robotic arm. While all visuals of the station are still under wraps, we're envisioning a Shell station for the 21st century--just the sort of highway inhabitant to bring the electric car out of the realm of sci-fi and into that of conceivable purchase.

What New Deal isn't designing are any of the vehicles that will utilize this infrastructure--that role, so far, has been filled by Renault/Nissan, who have already unveiled two prototype electric cars configured for the Better Place system: the eRogue (pictured below) and the eMegane sedan. Other manufacturers are said to be involved as well, but again, that's yet to be announced.