At battery changing stations, empty batteries can be swapped for fully charged ones. That takes about the same time as it would to fill a fuel tank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place

  Israel is the first nation in the world that partnered with Better Place 
  to have an all-electric car infrastructure. Shai Agassi believes that 
  in Israel by 2016, plus or minus a year, more than 50% of cars sold will 
  be electric and that by 2020, Israel will achieve oil independence. 
  The Baran Group signed an agreement with Better Place to build 
  51 battery switch stations over the course of 2011 to cover all of Israel.

Meta-comment:

Please don't post quotes using pre-formatted text. It forces the browser to use the full width. That, in turn, puts a horizontal scrollbar on my browser, so I have to scroll back-and-forth to read any of the comments.

I find it works much better to quote using asterisks. (We could also lobby pg for a BLOCKQUOTE feature)

That's a brilliant solution to the problem for cars that aren't Teslas, which has something like 1800 batteries lining its cabin floor. I don't think they'd be easily swapped.

For cars that don't implement batteries this way, I'm wondering how they allow for non-floor-mounted installations preventing the batteries from destroying their handling.

Further, how are the filling stations expected to deal with the variety of non-standard battery types on the market?