Battery swaps are the way to go. But 90 seconds is absurdly slow. 5 seconds should be plenty of time from when the car has stopped. Slide one out to the left, push one in from the right, simultaneously. Do the financial transaction wirelessly, on-line as the vehicle leaves, having identified it when it arrived. en.wikipedia.org had the right idea, but did a bad job of it and of course, with almost no electric cars around, had few customers.
Qualcomm's Halo will supply electricity conveniently and economically at home, at work, or at supermarkets and longer-term parking places which would include city street parking [allocated specifically to Halo cars as the numbers increase] qualcommhalo.com
But range will be an issue such as when driving 300 km without stopping. Battery swapping will be essential.
At 5 seconds per swap, that would be better than refueling with petrol [gasoline for Americans]. 5 battery swaps would still be only a minute or two [including slowing down and accelerating]. With 60 km range per charge, small, cheap, light-weight batteries could be used instead of big, heavy, fuel-wasting, expensive, long-range batteries. But fast swaps would be essential.
With a small car, little batteries, Halo, battery-swap pit stops, and power stations or photovoltaics providing cheap electricity, electric cars should be easily competitive with the old petrol-powered Otto cycle now, with oil at $100 a barrel.
A good swap system would include tracking the car and the remaining charge and communicating to the battery swap station to have the right battery ready and for the driver to pull in to the correct swap station where they could be assured of supply instantly and at the right price. Drivers would not want to arrive at a swap station to find they had flat batteries.
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