page_title: Range anxiety
section_title: Battery swapping
hierarchical_section_title: Range anxiety / Battery swapping
caption_attribution_description: A Tesla charging station with a rooftop solar collector feeding energy into the grid (not directly into the pictured Model S electric cars) that is manufactured by Solar City. This station, one of a number, is located in Tejon Ranch, California, USA, on the I-5 freeway about 100 miles north of Los Angeles.
context_page_description: Range anxiety is the fear that a vehicle has insufficient range to reach its destination and would thus strand the vehicle's occupants. The term, which is primarily used in reference to battery electric vehicles, is considered to be one of the major barriers to large scale adoption of all-electric cars. The term range anxiety was first reported in the press on September 1, 1997 in the San Diego Business Journal by Richard Acello referring to worries of GM EV1 electric car drivers. On July 6, 2010, General Motors filed to trademark the term, stating it was for the purpose of "promoting public awareness of electric vehicle capabilities". The Norwegian equivalent rekkeviddeangst was assigned second place in a list of Norwegian "words of the year" for 2013 by the Norwegian Language Council.
  The main strategies to alleviate range anxiety among electric car drivers are the deployment of extensive charging infrastructure, the development of higher battery capacity at a cost-effective price, battery swapping technology, use of range extenders, accurate navigation and range prediction and availability of free loan vehicles for long trips.
context_section_description: Battery swapping is a strategy to avoid range anxiety that allows electric cars to extend their range through a battery switch station. At the station, the depleted battery is swapped for fully charged battery in about the same time that it takes to fill up a car with gasoline. Battery swapping is common in warehouses using electric forklift trucks.
  As the electric car emerged as the main competing technology in the late 1890s until the 1920s, the concept of exchangeable battery service was first proposed as early as 1896 in order to overcome the limited operating range of electric cars and trucks. The concept was first put into practice by Hartford Electric Light Company through the GeVeCo battery service and initially available for electric trucks. The vehicle owner purchased the vehicle from General Vehicle Company (GVC, a subsidiary of the General Electric Company) without a battery and the electricity was purchased from Hartford Electric through an exchangeable battery. The owner paid a variable per-mile charge and a monthly service fee to cover maintenance and storage of the truck. Both vehicles and batteries were modified to facilitate a fast battery exchange. The service was provided between 1910 and 1924 and during that period covered more than 6 million miles. Beginning in 1917 a similar successful service was operated in Chicago for owners of Milburn Light Electric cars who also could buy the vehicle without the batteries.
  Better Place
  The Better Place network was the first modern commercial deployment of the battery switching model. The Renault Fluence Z.E. was the first electric car with a switchable battery available for the Better Place network in operation in Israel and Denmark. Better Place launched its first battery-swapping station in Israel, in Kiryat Ekron, near Rehovot in March 2011.  The battery exchange process took five minutes.  As of December 2012, there were 17 battery switch stations fully operational in Denmark enabling customers to drive anywhere across the country in an electric car.
  By late 2012 the company began to suffer financial difficulties, and decided to put on hold the roll out in Australia and reduce its non-core activities in North America, as the company decided to concentrate its resources on its two existing markets. Better Place filed for bankruptcy in Israel in May 2013. The company's financial difficulties were caused by the high investment required to develop the charging and swapping infrastructure, about US$850 million in private capital, and a market penetration significantly lower than originally predicted by Shai Agassi. Less than 1,000 Fluence Z.E. cars were deployed in Israel and around 400 units in Denmark. Under Better Place's business model, the company owns the batteries, so the court liquidator will have to decide what to do with customers who do not have ownership of the battery and risk being left with a useless car.
  Tesla Motors
  Tesla Motors designed its Model S to allow fast battery swapping. In June 2013, Tesla announced their goal to deploy a battery swapping station in each of its supercharging stations. At a demonstration event Tesla showed that a battery swap operation with the Model S takes just over 90 seconds, about half the time it takes to refill a gasoline-powered car used for comparison purposes during the event.
  The first stations were planned to be deployed along Interstate 5 in California where, according to Tesla, a large number of Model S sedans made the San Francisco-Los Angeles trip regularly. These would be followed by the Washington, DC to Boston corridor. Elon Musk said the service would be offered for the price of about 15 US gallons (57 l; 12 imp gal) of gasoline at the current local rate, around US$60 to US$80 at June 2013 prices. Owners would pick up their battery pack fully charged on the return trip, which would be included in the swap fee. Tesla would also offer the option to keep the pack received on the swap and paying the price difference if the battery received was newer; or to receive the original pack back from Tesla for 
caption: View of Tesla supercharger rapid charging station in Tejon Ranch, California.
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