Obvious in Hindsight

I love those inventions which in hindsight seem so obvious. The cat-door, for example, seems the most obvious thing: A little mini-door within the house door so that the cat can come in and out as he pleases. Yet alledgedly it took the genius Isaac Newton to invent it. (I suspect that’s a myth debunked on the Internet).

Now there’s an oh-so-obvious solution to the electric car problem. It takes hours to recharge an electric car, making the concept inconvenient. It would seem we need clever scientists to invent faster ways to charge batteries. But what about simply fitting service stations with the infrastructure to remove a spent battery and replace it with a full one? Like a Formula 1 pit lane, with the right tools and training this can done in seconds.

Here’s a video about Better Place, the people behind this obvious-in-hindsight idea.