Importance

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Abstract

Electric vehicles that use replaceable and exchangeable batteries, applications for communicating with a service that provides access to kiosks of batteries, and methods and systems for finding charged batteries, reserving batteries, and paying for use of the batteries, are disclosed. One example is a system for managing access to and exchange of batteries for use by electric vehicles. The electric vehicles have receptacle slots for receiving batteries for powering an electric motor of the electric vehicle. The system includes a kiosk having a plurality of receptacle slots for holding a plurality of batteries, and at least one of the plurality of receptacle slots is accessible to enable access of a battery from the kiosk. each receptacle slot having a connection disposed therein that connects to a power source. Each of the plurality of batteries have a form factor that is dimensioned to at least partially fit within ones of the receptacle slots and to be hand-inserted and hand-removed to and from the plurality of receptacle slots of the kiosk and the electric vehicle. The system includes a computer integrated in the kiosk and configured for communication with a server over a network. The computer configured to monitor status of each of the plurality of receptacle slots and enable delivery of power to each of the batteries present in one or more of the receptacle slots. The computer is further configured to process status data regarding at least an inventory of batteries present in the receptacle slots, or a charge level of the batteries present in the receptacle slots, or a number of available batteries having a charged state when in the kiosk. Mobile applications are useable to finding kiosks and obtaining batteries for exchange.

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First Claim