Having recently been allowed a test drive in a Nissan Leaf , in which the late autumn leaves falling on the car made more noise than the car, I was taken by the quiet, the reasonable performance, and general sense of how much more refined everything is than on my well-worn 1995 internal-combustion vehicle. Cars are indeed getting better, but an issue remains with electric cars and airplanes – range. The Nissan representatives, a lively bunch of presenters who took prospective drivers through a “pre-flight” education program, admitted that shortcoming, and promised a coming series of charging stations dotting the I-5 from Canada to Mexico at 100-mile intervals, the demonstrated range for the Leaf. Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi has come up with an interesting twist on recharging, distributing battery switching stations around Israel. A customer pulls into the station and drives the nearly discharged vehicle over a pit, in which a robotized conveyor system and associated machines disconnect the drained battery and …