Perhaps change pricing model of electric cars. Leave out the battery and let end-user pick battery of their choice. They can buy one new or used, or rent one. Rich folks can splurge for super high-performance battery while rest can pick from weaker batteries. Similar to gas-canisters where you're really only paying for contents. Turning battery-packs into standardised commodity items should improve quality and lower prices.
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Originally Posted by Triple Jim
Unfortunately past experience says that the manufacturers will make them proprietary to force you to buy their product. If two manufacturers would get together and use a common battery, I'd vote for one of them with my wallet.
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Yeah, I think we won't see that in U.S. due to monopolistic attitudes with manufacturers. Witness what happened between Qualcomm vs. Motorola over whose high-speed cellular will be adopted as next standard. By the time either one won in courts, both their technologies were obsolete! Billions and billions wasted!
Compare that to collaboration between Nokia and Ericsson on GSM. They worked together, developed it and implemented all over Europe in less than a year! Of course it wasn't ever popular here because it wasn't something big carriers can monopolise. We are so, so far behind on so many advanced technologies because of this. It's taken over 10-years now, I can finally go to Europe and Asia and buy SIM for local phone-service and pop it into my U.S. phone and have it work!
Same thing with electric car chargers, all over Europe and China, parking-meters have chargers that'll plug into pretty much any car. Not so here... Heck, just getting charger installed in house is major ordeal with finding proper charging connectors. My in-laws have Tesla, Prius and Nissan Leaf. Each one requires different connector. So they have to use 3 different jumper/extension cables that plug into a common wall socket. This socket is another set of connectors with resistance and after couple years, socket has melted due to heat! Would've been so much easier to have single charging connector, then single cable directly to charger with no junctions in between. Grrr....