I never understood why swappable batteries weren’t prioritized as standard in the first place. Decouple charging time from refueling time, and you could be in and out of the service station in minutes. Plus, batteries degrade over time, so a long-lasting car is going to need replacements eventually anyway.
Making them swappable would present design challenges, but nothing is impossible if it’s a design requirement. Current EVs distribute batteries wherever they can to distribute the weight and prevent damage from collisions or debris. But if they were required to be a certain form factor and removable, cars would be designed around that. Even better, you could get away with a much shorter range, because most people want higher capacity for the occasional long trip. You might have space for two cells, and only keep one in the car most days.
Regarding charging time, charging time is not that much of an issue. With a decent battery you need to stop roughly 15-20 min every 2 hours on the highway, less on smaller roads.
It’s honestly not a big issue and the charging time is being reduced with new technologies of batteries. What could be an issue in the other hand of the lack of charger. For this issue swapping batteries would only make things worse. An EV charger is a very basic infrastructure compared to a swapping station.
Building a swapping station would be orders of magnitude more expensive than an EV charging station and requires way more space. So I suspect we only would have a limited amount of stations available.
Lastly, going to the station to refuel a car is a reflex inherited from thermal engine powered cars. Most of the EV charging is done during the night at home or on the parking spot. Public chargers are used only occasionally.
So for all these reasons I think swappable batteries are actually a terrible idea for regular cars even though it sounds like a good idea.
That’s just it. Swappable batteries sound really cool and appealing, and I guess that’s why NIO is trying them out. Building that sort of infrastructure is incredibly expensive, and it comes with high financial risks. Finding that kind of money from investors appears to be happening, but I don’t know if they actually have enough runway to make it viable. To me, that sounds like an infrastructure project only a government could do.
You’d need a service contract with a battery supplier.
No fuel station would risk a competitor driving in with their old batteries and swapping them with good batteries.
So you would likely be locked in with a fuel station brand.
As a consumer, you also risk picking up a dud.
Fuel stations would also need to be considered in insurance claims, as they would own the battery.
It’s a great idea, however. I’d rather see more public transport and less cars. But electric cars, easier “refueling” of electric cars, and more solar/wind/hydro/nuclear power is a good hold over
We actually have this thing in Australia called swap n go. It’s pretty ubiquitous in hardware stores and petrol stations- you bring in an empty lpg gas canister, swap it for a full one.
Granted there’s probably a monopoly behind it, but that’s not locked to a fuel station
Yeh, that’s pretty common. But a gas bottle is a lot cheaper than a battery, and testing a gas bottle is cheaper as well.
Swappable batteries could work, but there is a lot of risk involved
Electric-powered public transport is the best for both worlds. If we can add electric buses to trams and plan the cities accordingly, most people living in them would never need to own a car.
Sounds like a job for a federal program. Certify and inspect all batteries and connect every station to a central server. It would be a massive administrative task, but it would create a lot of commerce, jobs, and taxes from new sales.
I never understood why swappable batteries weren’t prioritized as standard in the first place. Decouple charging time from refueling time, and you could be in and out of the service station in minutes. Plus, batteries degrade over time, so a long-lasting car is going to need replacements eventually anyway.
The problem is that batteries are often deeply integrated for performance reasons. So it’s not so easy to swap them.
Making them swappable would present design challenges, but nothing is impossible if it’s a design requirement. Current EVs distribute batteries wherever they can to distribute the weight and prevent damage from collisions or debris. But if they were required to be a certain form factor and removable, cars would be designed around that. Even better, you could get away with a much shorter range, because most people want higher capacity for the occasional long trip. You might have space for two cells, and only keep one in the car most days.
Batteries in EV don’t degrade that much, it is now expected that for most cars the battery will last longer that the car itself.
https://scienceillustrated.com/technology/how-long-do-electric-car-batteries-last-what-6300-electric-vehicles-tell-us-about-ev-battery-life
Regarding charging time, charging time is not that much of an issue. With a decent battery you need to stop roughly 15-20 min every 2 hours on the highway, less on smaller roads.
It’s honestly not a big issue and the charging time is being reduced with new technologies of batteries. What could be an issue in the other hand of the lack of charger. For this issue swapping batteries would only make things worse. An EV charger is a very basic infrastructure compared to a swapping station.
Building a swapping station would be orders of magnitude more expensive than an EV charging station and requires way more space. So I suspect we only would have a limited amount of stations available.
Lastly, going to the station to refuel a car is a reflex inherited from thermal engine powered cars. Most of the EV charging is done during the night at home or on the parking spot. Public chargers are used only occasionally.
So for all these reasons I think swappable batteries are actually a terrible idea for regular cars even though it sounds like a good idea.
That’s just it. Swappable batteries sound really cool and appealing, and I guess that’s why NIO is trying them out. Building that sort of infrastructure is incredibly expensive, and it comes with high financial risks. Finding that kind of money from investors appears to be happening, but I don’t know if they actually have enough runway to make it viable. To me, that sounds like an infrastructure project only a government could do.
You’d need a service contract with a battery supplier.
No fuel station would risk a competitor driving in with their old batteries and swapping them with good batteries.
So you would likely be locked in with a fuel station brand.
As a consumer, you also risk picking up a dud.
Fuel stations would also need to be considered in insurance claims, as they would own the battery.
It’s a great idea, however. I’d rather see more public transport and less cars. But electric cars, easier “refueling” of electric cars, and more solar/wind/hydro/nuclear power is a good hold over
We actually have this thing in Australia called swap n go. It’s pretty ubiquitous in hardware stores and petrol stations- you bring in an empty lpg gas canister, swap it for a full one.
Granted there’s probably a monopoly behind it, but that’s not locked to a fuel station
Yeh, that’s pretty common. But a gas bottle is a lot cheaper than a battery, and testing a gas bottle is cheaper as well.
Swappable batteries could work, but there is a lot of risk involved
Lotta risk involved in storing gas like that back in the day too. We adapt.
Electric-powered public transport is the best for both worlds. If we can add electric buses to trams and plan the cities accordingly, most people living in them would never need to own a car.
Sounds like a job for a federal program. Certify and inspect all batteries and connect every station to a central server. It would be a massive administrative task, but it would create a lot of commerce, jobs, and taxes from new sales.