Better Place tried to make this happen in a few small test markets, and failed spectacularly. Turns out building out that kind of infrastructure is quite expens

Better Place tried to make this happen in a few small test markets, and failed spectacularly. Turns out building out that kind of infrastructure is quite expensive, and only works if a large number of cars on the road are compatible with your batteries. It might take off when electric car deployment is much higher than it is now, but it doesn't help with bootstrapping.