Tokyo Electric Taxi Project

Tokyo Electric Taxi Better Place and Nihon Kotsu say the program has gone well and yielded a wealth of data,They're the first battery-exchange taxis in the world, so we've gotten a lot of questions," Fujii says. "We get a chance to be on the cutting edge of what's otherwise a monotonous business."
What makes the business exciting to Fujii these days is the opportunity to make a quantum leap in how a taxi business operates, and to deliver to society not only new technology but a new way of thinking about technology - vehicle powerplants that can be replaced several times a day.
The environmental argument is compelling as well,Though taxis represent only 2 percent of Tokyo s cars, they are responsible for 20% of vehicle CO2 emissions. At any given time, half of all of the city's 60,000 taxis are circulating around never-sleeping Tokyo, seeking customers.
A single internal-combustion taxi produces 29 tons of CO2 a year and most of it can be eliminated by going electric, says Ryuji Kaneda, director of Nihon Kotsu's Sales and Operations Division.
But even though Better Place sees battery exchange as a way to end range anxiety, Kaneda's chief concern was just that,What's difficult with this system is that with today's batteries you can only drive 80-100 kilometers (50-60 miles), so you have to switch out batteries often, and some customers can't go as far as they need," he told us in an interview. "So we'd like a little more range."
The batteries from A123 Systems are 17 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion cells, and Fujii said Nissan is working on a 24 kWh battery that would extend the range of a Dualis/Rogue-sized car to to 90-plus miles,

Tokyo Electric Taxi by Nazir hk