We're almost there with PV Solar price/performance.

[Kevin]

200+ handles most peoples daily driving habits. I'm not so worried about 700 miles driving. More worried about finding recharging places and the time it takes, so I can continue on my trip in the morning. That said, I think a good solution will be more like a battery exchange. Sort of like what happens with gas grill propane tanks. The issue there is standardization, and the service station would test the batteries and ensure the quality standards are met.

It does, but there are enough people like me who average 30 - 60 miles a week and then every month or two end up doing 300 - 700 in a day. The Tesla supercharger stations (free to use for any Tesla owner) plan to have most of the major travel corridors covered by the end of 2015, no it's no where near as ubiquitous as gas stations, but it could be. Right now it's at 119 stations ( http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger ). These are Tesla specific stations too, but with all their patents being freely available, in a move that was designed to help get others to build compatible infrastructure like this by using Tesla designs, more could be on the way. Get Exxon or BP or just one of the other major oil companies to buy in to some sort of pay for charge rapid charging stations and full coverage problem solved in a year or two since they already have the real estate with all the partner gas stations.

A 30 minute charge time is still longer than most people want, but is not unreasonable for a 250 mile range (though 30 minutes would only add back to about 175 miles, it's still 75 minutes for a full charge). That's around 4 hours of driving in the US if you stay within reasonable range of the speed limits so stopping for 30 minutes to charge, eat, stretch, etc isn't crazy.

I've read about the battery swap stations but I'm not sure about them. Part of the issue with it is the way warranties work on batteries, they have expected life times, etc. You do a full swap and you might end up with batteries that have a year of cycles left when yours had 10 years left. If 90% of your charging is done with the vehicle plugged into your garage that is a problem. It's not an insurmountable problem, and if you changed the full battery set every time you "charged" your vehicle it's not an issue, but that isn't how folks use electrics.

More rapid charging stations combined with longer vehicle ranges is what is being worked on and deployed right now. If the rapid chargers still get you to 80% of a charge in 40 minutes (and I don't know if they will on the new battery techs) and full range is 500 miles most people won't care, a 15 minute charge would get you about 150 miles more range in that case, 30 minutes gets you around 300. That range makes cross country trips possible with a charge happening at a natural food / restroom stop. Private charging stations don't mind the longer charge times since it makes it more likely that you'll buy something else.

I think the charge station, likely with a pay for power, like pay for gas and not the $2000 up front on the vehicle and free at specific stations model, will probably win out. It would be nice if those stations were all solar/wind powered, but if everyone were electric and all the gasoline stations were charging stations, they are still pulling from the grid.