A solution to the charging dilemma

I READ with interest the letter from Mrs Peters (November 25) asking how people without off-street parking will be able to charge their vehicles.

There is a very simple answer, in fact it is so simple it will never happen. It would require the cooperation of governments and manufacturers to implement, and historically such cooperation seems difficult to achieve.

A simple change of thinking is required. Stop thinking that the fuel for the electric car is the electricity and instead think of the battery as the fuel. The manufacturers need to design the vehicles to have easily replaceable batteries, not built-in as, say, in a mobile phone but as the replaceable batteries in your TV remote control.

The governments need to fund a new infrastructure of electric “fuel” stations which will operate in the same way as petrol/diesel garages work at the moment. One drives one’s car to the garage, the discharged battery is pulled out of the car and a fully charged battery plugged back in its place. If properly set up, this need take no longer than filling the car with liquid fuel.

The garage now recharges the battery ready for another customer. It will, of course, need to have a “float” of recharged batteries ready for use.

There are two big advantages with this idea. Firstly the limited range problem is solved; after all, my petrol car only has a range of 300 miles and my frequent trips to Scotland always require a fuelling stop to complete the journey, about 10 minutes in a filling station.

Secondly, there will be no necessity for individual homes to have charging points. This will help the distribution of the very large increase in demand for electricity, a few very big cables to the garages rather than the many thousands of uprated cables needed to feed individual homes.

Perhaps if this were to come about I might consider an electric car myself.

Colin Rose

Rhiwbina, Cardiff