10 times longer battery power with an air-fuelled battery

Charge times are not such an issue :  increased capacity means increased range for electric cars and that is the tipping point for a lot of people.  Refuelling is already moving to a 'just replace the whole battery at the charging station' model rather than a 'plug me into the mains and wait' model.

It's also a better environmental policy to have a 'rent the battery and replace when empty' model as the recycling of the battery is assured (as opposed to having piles of old betteries in the backs of people's garages).

What is needed is a battery standard (they've come up with a connector standard quickly enough, hopefully a battery standard wouldn't be out of the question).

Herbie

It depends entirely on the model of the contract, but rhm's model above sounds plausable.

The idea that you 'rent' the materials of a product has been put forward as a way to ensure that the materials are recovered and recycled efficiently by encouraging ecologically intelligent design (http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm). Batteries for electric cars would fit this model well:  the battery suppliers would find it cheaper to recondition batteries than to build new ones from scratch. It would be cheaper still to ensure that the batteries can be efficiently recycled into new batteries from the start.

It's obvious that electric cars aren't going to replace petrol anytime soon, and they may get taken over by hydrogen fuel cell technology, but the work done on efficiency for electric cars can be applied to other appliances.

I like the idea that with both electric and fuel-cell cars the energy source can be decoupled from the engine. Yes, the energy might come from fossil fuelled power stations, but it could equally come from nuclear, hydro-electric, geothermal or wind powered sources. 

Herbie

I would assume that the charging stations would have a returns policy (they would have to take the mileage of the car when they fit the battery and the serial number of the battery I would guess). You return the faulty battery to the company's charging station and they refund your money plus more for you inconvenience (I like rmh's idea that they provide a pickup service).  The charging station would then take it up with the battery supplier\manufacturer (with whome it is assumed they you have a service level agreement).

Why do you assume you have to sue someone?  It's entirely possible to have these things set up in the legal contract of the purchase\rental.

Herbie