Around a dozen electric charging stations were set up, with Canberra's short commuting distances touted as the ideal roll-out location for the limited range Better Place batteries.

But within a few years, Better Place had gone belly-up and taken $25 million worth of local investment with it.

Investors such as Lendlease and ActewAGL, together with a number of private stakeholders, lost their money on a concept whose time had not yet come.

The arrival of Australia's first hydrogen refuelling station to Fyshwick later this year promises to be a better place bet for the ACT government, with French renewable energy supplier Neoen providing the power to run the ACT hydrogen-making process from the Hornsdale Wind Farm and its associated 100-megawatt Tesla lithium-ion battery storage.

To give its hydrogen service station a practical application, Neoen is providing the ACT government with 20 Hyundai Nexo hatchbacks.

In the UK, the Nexo sells for the equivalent of $105,000. All the cars delivered here will be in high specification, have a five-star safety rating out of Europe, and have such an advanced air filtration system that it cleans the air around it as it drives.

Hyundai Australia says it is still working out the local price of the 20 production fuel cell cars which will be shipped to Australia progressively over the next six months and will be driven around Canberra by ACT public servants from late 2019 onwards.

The cars will have a driving range of around 440 kilometres on one full tank of hydrogen.

The major benefit of hydrogen fuel cell cars over plug-in electric, although both are electric vehicles, is the fast refuelling time.

Filling up a Nexo with hydrogen takes much the same time as filling the tank of a conventional car, although the connection from the bowser to the car's fuel tank has to be highly secure and completely leak-proof because of the vapour's volatility.

Even the best fast-chargers take between 20-30 minutes to recharge a plug-in electric car off the grid. From a powerpoint at home, it may take as long as 8 hours.

The decade-old Better Place battery swap concept, which completely swapped out your car's depleted battery pack much like slipping a big D-cell battery out of your Dolphin torch, was seen as a practical solution to the recharging time issue.

At the time Better Place was touted as the next big thing in transportation, attracting $850 million in funding from the likes of Morgan Stanley, General Electric and the HSBC Group.

And Canberra was seen as the logical national launch pad.

The clincher - or so it was thought - was when one of the world's largest car companies, Nissan-Renault, agreed to build vehicles specifically to suit the Better Place swap-out design.

But that's where the idea foundered. Rival car companies didn't embrace the idea, the driving range was too short, and the roll-out of battery-swapping stations took too long.

However, improvements in battery technology may bring the same idea full circle.

Premium Chinese car maker Nio is forging ahead with its swap-out battery electric vehicles, building a range of cars and the compact, modular garage-style battery swap facilities to match.

The Nio replacement battery swap is fully automated and takes three minutes. An app directs the Nio owner to the nearest charging station and the swap costs around A$58 (280 Chinese yuan).