Years ago when moved to Bangkok I used to marvel at how cheap taxis were. A few years later I bought a small Corolla with a modest 1.6 liter engine. I realized that the price my very efficient Toyota per km was just a bit higher than what it cost to be chauffeured around in a taxi the same distance. I was baffled.

Turns out they can afford it because an engine converted to run on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) costs about 1/3 as much to operate as the same car on gasoline. Sitting in the back of Bangkok taxis thinking about how lucky I was to live somewhere that had adequate CNG pumps (and no longer metro Detroit) planted the seed that has become this blog.

Well travelling by taxi just got a whole lot better.

On Sunday, Better Place launched switchable-battery electric taxis onto the streets of Tokyo (see the slideshow at the bottom of this post). Although I think there are only a handful at the moment. The electric vehicles are able to drive into a battery switching station and exchange their empty batteries for ones with a complete charge in less time than it would take to fill up with petrol. They can run all day, cool and emission free.

EVs are cheap to operate and with a lot less moving parts, require far less maintenance. Will they pass that savings along to customers, probably. One thing is certain they’ll be a whole lot quieter.