Electric vehicle services provider Better Place said Friday its automated battery swap stations have marked 1,000 replacements of batteries from electric vehicles in Japan, the firm's vice president Jason Wolf said at the Smart Grid Innovation Symposium, according to Greentechmedia.

The technology has so far functioned without any flaw or problem in Japan, Wolf said according to the report.

The company led by Shai Agassi, unveiled a battery switching technology on May 12 in Japan, consisting of stations with robots programmed to replace the empty battery of an electric car with a newly fully charged battery in about 1 minute. Conventional recharging stations charge the battery of a vehicle in hours.

Users of this service would need to pay a subscription similar to those cell phone companies offer.

Better Place's strategy views batteries as a separate accessory of the car allowing it to be removed and used in other vehicles. Therefore, the company owns the batteries, not the car.

Japan Battery Update