Better Place targets 160,000 electric cars a year

The scale of the ambition underpinning Project Better Place's plan to develop mainstream electric vehicles was underlined yesterday when it emerged that the company expects to roll out 160,000 electric cars a year in Denmark and Israel from 2011.

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Jens Moberg, one of the company's senior executives and chief executive of Better Place Denmark, said that he expected the firm's partnership with Renault to result in annual electric car sales in "the tens of thousands" within three years.

Project Better Place is seeking to pioneer an innovative business model where car drivers sign up to a monthly subscription plan, similar to those operated for mobile phones, that allows them to access the batteries needed to run the electric cars developed by the Renault-Nissan Alliance.

Motorists would simply swap run-down batteries for full batteries at Better Place recharging stations, effectively removing the problem of recharging that has hampered the adoption of conventional electric cars.

Moberg refused to give details of the expected pricing for the subscription model, but he revealed that the three models of electric cars – a sedan, a city car and a van – will cost up to 200,000 kroner (£23,080) while the Lithium-ion batteries will cost about €8,000 (£6,800) to manufacture. However, he added that he expected the cost of batteries to "come down afterwards as production expands ".

He said that initially about 100 battery-swap stations will be available across Denmark and predicted that the size of the country, combined with the range of cars, means that ultimately there will be "fewer than 1,000 stations".

The news confirms that Better Place is accelerating its ambitious plans to deliver a country-wide recharging network within the next few years. The company has secured high-profile support from a large number of national and regional governments, announcing similar plans for networks in Hawaii and San Francisco, and recently revealing that it is looking to build arguably its most ambitious recharging network to date in Australia.

Moberg also revealed that Better Place was in talks with a number of other European countries, including France, about further expanding its network.