Also, with 200+ mile range, range anxiety isn’t really a problem for most drivers. Most people just drive to work and around town. People who need longer range buy cars with gasoline engines (including plug-in hybrids and range-extended EVs).
Even better would be to remove the batteries entirely, or go with a very small battery for limited speed and range, and just electrify the highway. The technology is already there. If America doesn’t do it, some other country eventually will.
That’s an even worse idea. Right now, with supercharging, we have a solution that works only a little worse than gas.
For most commutes, for nearly all car owners in the United States, 99% of the time, they are back to their home parking spot by the end of the day and have driven under 200 miles. So they can just plug in and do it all again the next day.
On those rare 1% trips, superchargers only cost them about 90 extra minutes of time waiting to charge per 12 hour driving day.
These are losses, but they are small. Hardly worth the expense of electrifying thousands of miles of highway or spending billions of dollars installing robotic battery swap stations.
A better solution is : just stick with supercharging for most people. Most people will fly long distance anyways, but if they need to move somewhere, they can charge on the way and only lose a tiny amount of time, which is more than made up for all the time they saved since the other 99% of the time, they do not even have to visit a gas station.
And for those traveling salesman and people who are always on the road : those people can just stick with hybrids, which are an efficient, practical technology.
^^^ that.
I’m rather amazed at how stubbornly people insist on treating EVs exactly like gas cars; e.g. drive until the fuel is almost depleted then go somewhere to replenish it.
Yes. People have put forward reasonable objections, but think of how easy swappable batteries would be! It’d be faster than gas fill-up. It’s a cool dream.
Faster? Seriously? I doubt that very much.
All infrastructure costs on a massive scale are costly, but electric cars on an individual basis would drop considerably not having to deal with the massive battery packs, as well as being more fuel efficient if they were not hauling around 1,000 lbs+ of batteries along with freeing up a lot of space. And setting the robotic battery swaps aside, how do you know it wouldn’t be feasible of electrifying the highway without dealing with the massive batteries? Most countries that are experimenting with this for small runs, as well as some states, see benefits in the electric highway without using the batteries which includes the 18 wheelers, although I’m not aware of any large scale project of it yet.
The technology is there , it would be better for the environment, but it’s not the better solution economically for most individuals on either of these systems. And all-electric car requires even more space and weight than the hybrid if the highway isn’t electrified, and are also more costly if you want any decent range, again due to the massive batteries that are required. If one wanted it for just local driving, and limited range, then many would opt for the extra expense of another vehicle when they did want to travel further. While hybrids are fuel efficient, most experts and consumers agree, don’t expect what gas savings you get are going to be offset by the higher initial costs with those either, along with battery replacement costs.
One thing you missed, though. We were on 59 this summer, near Volborg, when we decided to go up Hay Creek Road, because, reasons (I found an awesome lava bomb, but it was a bit too big to take home). What happens when we want to take the battery-less car up one of those roads? Are we simply fucked and “stay on the damn highway, you moron”? There are plenty of usage cases where electrified roads might make sense, but not a few more where the idea falls flat. And I think you are severely underestimating the infrastructure cost. I cannot see it as workable or even environmentally friendly.
The NHS consists of over 164,000 miles of road.
What would you say is a realistic cost per mile of your proposal?
That’s when you pray. 
Nah, I covered that breifly with my first post, a very small battery package for limited range and speed might be the answer. Or just a very small petrol engine.
As far as I’m severely underestimating the infrastructure cost, I haven’t given any, don’t actually have any ball-park figures, do you? But look what Eisenhower did when he first introduced the interstate highway back in 1950. Imagine our economy without it. Also, a wild guess, I suppose we have, what, a trillion dollars or more worth of interstate highways. Whatever its costs, I doubt electrifying would be as much, but still a very hefty bill that experts would have to weigh in on.
Did you see the 60 Minutes piece on electrifying our highways that ran a few years back? I didn’t catch it, but others I know did, where they had talked about it. If anyone has a link, I’d like to see it myself. Haven’t been able to find it yet.
I read a piece in Popular Mechanics about 30 years ago that was proposing this very ideal. And instead of using the overhead lines, they had a system worked out which would go directly into the highway itself.
Probably a good years salary for me, not sure. 
My best guess would be considerably less than the NHS itself, but I’d like to have someone more knowledgeable than me answer this question.
On an environmental scale, the benefits would be huge.
Which means digging up and replacing every inch of 164,000 miles of road.
Although it’s been a long time ago, I don’t recall the Popular Mechanics article saying it would have to replace all of it.
If you don’t come home the same way noone is going to want to drive 200 miles to pick up their batter.
I’ll try to find archive that article. Best I recall, it was on top of the highway, or slightly down into it. They also had some safety features built in for rains and such, which was suppose to prevent any electrical shocks.
Even better, put them on wires above the highway. We already have models of that in lots of cities.
I can see it now - “The Trolleys Must Roll.”
Stanford exploded induction resonance charge transfer, which is safe and efficient. As for practical or realistic, I will note that the link is from over five years ago. The high cost of feeding an electric highway sounds like a major drawback.
It’s not easy! It’s a huge engineering challenge.
Do you not know how heavy an electric car battery is? The Chevy Bolt battery weighs 960 pounds. The Tesla Model-S battery is around 1200 pounds.
And as already mentioned, the electrical contacts carry an enormous amount of current. You know those heavy-duty 240V power outlets used for clothes dryers? Those are typically good for 50 amps or so. A Tesla Model-S battery in Ludicrous mode can output up to 1,400 amps. Even a smaller Chevy Bolt battery outputs about 500 amps.
Again, why.
Electric roads do sound cool. But the cost per mile would probably be more than a million dollars.
And ok, let’s just ignore that and all the issues with wiring and connections and arcing and car wrecks and high voltage and losses and everything else.
Right now, today, we already have the makings of a solution that can work with barely any change at all.
Most Americans live in a house with a beefy enough power feed to run an A/C or electric oven. A level 2 EV charger is a mere 30 amps of current draw, and for most houses can draw from the main electric panel that 30 amps at any time with no problems. For really old houses, you simply would retrofit the level 2 EV charger, and slap a sensor around the main power feed to measure the current draw. Tell the charger what the total service capacity is for the house, and it wouldn’t draw more than the main breaker can handle. Total cost per house : a few hundred bucks. A little over 1k if an electrician does the install.
For those in apartments, it’s a similar easy upgrade, it simply requires state and national governments to deny landlords the ability to prohibit installation of EV chargers, the same way regulations deny landlords the ability to stop the installation of satellite dishes.
That handles 99% of personal vehicle traffic. For the other 1%, you can have a few supercharging truck stops with high voltage DC chargers that will probably be sped up a bit, to 15 minutes for a 65% charge. (from 15%->80%)
And, finally, for those who would be wasting 15 minutes all the time because they live life on the road, and for 18 wheel trucks moving heavy gear, and all the countless legacy vehicles, there will be gas stations for a long time. I could see them eventually starting to go the way of blockbuster video, but not quite to that extent. Hybrid vehicles work quite well, especially plug in hybrids, they just are complex to maintain and have shorter battery range, so most people would be served better by a pure EV.
The downside to superchargers is that they put more stress on the battery, shortening its lifespan.