See, Apple? Even cars can do it :)
When 52% of all trips made are less than 3 miles and less than 2% are over fifty miles, I don’t think battery swapping is something any individual needs on a regular basis.
I could get on board if manufacturers were making $10,000 sub 50 mile vehicles that were compatible with a swap station so you could switch to a larger battery for the weekend. This would have to be a standard adopted by all however, and even before that, they’d have to make small cars. Which they won’t, because we all know they are too busy making trucks and SUVs.
Do people even need a car for a 3 miles trip? You can cover that on a bike in 15-20 mins at a chill pace… Also, 28% of trips are less than a mile? People can’t walk a mile?
Not everyone is child free and lives where it doesn’t rain
The Dutch do it… Rain or shine (mostly rain with crazy wind) with their cargo/kid bikes.
I am Dutch
So just lazy then?
I live on the Dutch coast and still cycle despite constantly shit weather.
I have 4 kids. Stop acting like a rodent.
Sounds like you’re stressed from all those kids! Have you tried cycling? It’s a great outlet and stress relief
Would be good for hauling large objects
I doubt the average person needs to do that daily over such a short distance.
hear hear for small cars
52% of all trips made are less than 3 miles and less than 2% are over fifty miles
I got a Chevy Volt based on this premise, and it’s true! I barely touched my car’s ICE until I moved further out into the sticks (running away from rising rents) and even way out here most of my trips are to the grocery store or post office and don’t need it.
The whole “but what about the one journey a year you make that’s outside the normal battery range?” is such an obvious fossil fuel industry boondoggle. It’s up there with “but what about that one time you had to move a fridge?” when convincing people that a Ford F150 is a normal sized family car.
It’s almost like they knew in the sixties that they were in for some problems and have since been devising ever more complicated methods of disinforming the public in order to maintain their wealth. Does my head in sometimes.
I could get on board if manufacturers were making $10,000 sub 50 mile vehicles that were compatible with a swap station so you could switch to a larger battery for the weekend. This would have to be a standard adopted by all however, and even before that, they’d have to make small cars. Which they won’t, because we all know they are too busy making trucks and SUVs.
they make $10k ev’s with 250 mile ranges that are for sale everywhere except the united states & canada. you can get them in australia or western europe for a 50-75%-ish tariff depending on which country you’re in…
Without knowing any examples of the vehicles that are for sale everywhere except, roughly, half the world, I can’t really say much them. What I can say is that compared to the monstrous subsidies the oil and gas industry recieve, it does seem like those tariffs could be done away with. At least on the face of it, perhaps the issue is more intricate than that but I’m sure you grasp my meaning.
for the united states, it’s actually pretty simple; it’s about stopping chinese control of the auto industry and protecting ford, gm & chrysler from having to innovate. here’s a short video with a high level overview of it.
I think it’s great to see this happening. I’ve always thought this option makes sense. I still wish the solution was a drone that comes right to you and drops a battery into a port on your roof while you are still driving, but I guess that is going to have to wait.
I want to see someone try.
Not because it’s practical, or because it makes sense. But because it sounds like it makes sense but I’m practice would be so impractical and hard that the solution would be absolutely hilarious.
You’re driving along the freeway at 70 miles an hour, and a jet powered super drone rockets along side the car carrying a 2000 pound brick of lithium and drops it on top of you like a fucking dump truck. The shock crushes the cheap Chinese car like a can of soda and the sudden change in weight sends the drone careening off in to the air at a reasonable percentage of mach 1. The last thing you see on this earth as your brain matter is squeezed out of your eye sockets like toothpaste is a wide eyed driver in the car next to you.
The resulting pile up kills 4 people immediately, and several more later as they get caught in an expanding wave of lithium battery fires that either burn them to death or suck all of the oxygen out of the air.
I can see so many issues with what you’re proposing, but hey auto grenade dropping drones have great military application
The answer is massive government support. The cost of those stations has to be insane…imagine the inventory holding cost of those batteries
True. Over the past ten years, China has invested something like a trillion dollars into renewable energy through a combination of their state enterprises and public-private partnerships, and this is just one of the ways they’re reaping the dividends of that investment.
Don’t worry, the US government will support its automakers by banning the competition.
That is, if they make totally cool and totally legal campaign contributions.
Competing is for the working class, not the 1%.
Imagine the cost of stations everywhere that would have tanker-trucks deliver fluid that you’d put in cars
This is not comparable.
The fuel is spent and sold. Gas stations usually only have a few days supply of inventory.
This is like holding engines in inventory to swap without notice on the spot. But in this case the engines cost $10k+.
The fee to swap is about $12…so you have to swap each battery about 800 times to break even. See how you’re wrong yet?
Ah so this is about swapping the battery on-the-go so you can get rid of your depleted one and get a freshly charged one within minutes.
That’s actually pretty cool then!
Not quite sure how this relates to Apple though.
It’s a joke about how apple made their phone even thinner and the battery still isn’t removable :P
The example of driving from Paris to Mt St Michel where you have to plan carefully to get to ‘the only supercharger’ east of Paris is a bit stupid. Why not charge at Total, Engie, or even Lidl? I assume Teslas are not exclusively charged at superchargers, which can be pretty slow at 150kW when there are 300kW options as well.
A good and in France rapidly improving charging network is important, swapping batteries sounds nice but brings so many compatibility and standardization issues, not considering ownership/lock-in etc.
I stopped reading the article there.
Either the author is voluntarily misleading or he has no idea of what he is talking about.
Here is the map all the fast charging stations (>100kW) along the way between Paris and the Mont St Michel.
I did not count them but at a first glance the number of charger is higher than “none”
The cost to install stations would dramatically reduce if you had one stations that could supply 20 parking lots instead of one station for each two lots.
It also shuts up all the complaints about batteries going dead and the cost of replacing them.
I do agree ice vehicles are already very convenient and most people complaining are mostly just parroting oil propoganda, but making them even more convenient isn’t a bad thing.
I don’t think many run their batteries to the ground but it’s nice to know someone can just bring you a spare if you do.
I’m complaining about the battery station model, not about the EV in general.
I have a few points to point out:
- Battery pack recycle is still expensive and complex. It isn’t an engine block you can disassemble, melt, and mold for something else.
- Ownership is a huge problem. This ties tightly to right to repair. Say your car broke down, now you’re almost certainly need to go through the dealer or the manufacture because the battery isn’t yours.
- This impacts the life expectancy of the vehicle. Once the battery model for your car is EOL, you either stuck with the last battery swapped in, or worst you need to return the battery and have a non-functional car.
- Resell value. Battery is one of the most critical component on an EV. You might not able to resell it at a satisfaction price as you don’t have a battery, even it is fitted a leased one as the next owner need to pay the subscription continuously.
Actually, I’m not a fan of ICEV nor EV. ICEV pollutes when they run, EV pollutes when they need to be disassemble and recycle. It is simply not happening in front of your eyes doesn’t mean it is not. We all need to look at the overall carbon footprint (I can’t think of another better word), from manufacturing to the end of life. For EV and its battery, starts from mining rare earth elements.
I’m more on to the Hydrogen Vehicle, especially fuel cells. IMO the development in this low, and small (at least I don’t see much news about it).
Hydrogen is a dead end. The only company left trying to chase that particular dragon is Toyota, and I predict eventually they’ll be forced to admit that it’ll never work en masse for private vehicles. Ordinary consumers can already barely be trusted with gasoline, which is neither under high pressure nor requires industrial grade refrigeration to keep it in liquid form, and is a lot harder to ignite… The delivery systems for hydrogen are extremely complex and must maintain an absolute 0% failure rate or else somebody will either get blown up or frozen to a pump. Gasoline is at least a liquid and behaves predictably when spilled, and doesn’t phase change instantly when it leaves containment. And a mechanical failure in the delivery system can be mitigated by simply shutting off the pump. You poke a hole in a hydrogen filling system and you’re going to have a very interesting time. Current systems have redundancies on top of safety devices on top of redundancies for this reason which makes them fantastically expensive.
Hydrogen also has crap for energy density (around 8 kJ/liter in liquid form, compared to 32 kJ/liter for gasoline) and even if you’re producing it via electrolysis or something is a wildly inefficient way to store and transport energy. If you’re going to use electricity to create and compress hydrogen to transport it and create electricity with it later, it is monumentally more efficient to take the electricity and put it in batteries. So you may as well just to that.
The thing with battery swapping is that it will absolutely require strong government regulation to ensure standardization and fair treatment of owners. Replaceable batteries in consumer devices obviously aren’t a new concept, and before proprietary lithium packs took over everything, every single consumer device was powered by AAA, AA, C, or D batteries which were very well understood by everybody and were – and are – completely interchangeable commodity items that are readily available to this day. That’s the only way it’ll work. Manufacturers will have to be forced to standardize on a set of pack sizes because without oversight they’ll inevitably try to turn everything into a subscription-only walled garden pretty much exactly as you have predicted. But if there is a thing as an equivalent of an AAA vehicle battery (for motorcycles and scooters), AA vehicle battery (for city microcars, NEV’s, golf carts, etc.) and C vehicle battery (full size passenger cars) and D vehicle battery (light trucks) etc., and nobody is allowed to try to make up their own bullshit, then no one will have to give a rat’s ass about battery health, the dealership, lock-in, or anything else. If you buy a used vehicle with a knackered pack in it or your battery gets cacked, you could just bop down to your local AutoZone or whatever and buy a new one. Or push your car to the nearest swap station. You’ll turn in your old one for the core charge. Exactly like how 12v vehicle batteries work now.
We’ll have to get people used to the notion that, yes, these things will be kind of a battery lottery and you may get swapped in a pack that’s in slightly worse condition than your last one if you go around pack-swapping all the time. But you know, the next time you swap you’ll get a different one again. And you can play already this game right now if you want to – just go buy some fuel in a third world country.
I still have faith in hydrogen vehicles. I have read somewhere I forgot that using fuel cell is the better way of using hydrogen, instead of burning it. It does have difficulties but maybe in next 5 yrs scientist and engineers may come up something breakthrough. But if none invest now, that won’t happen in the future.
And about regulation on standard battery, I fully support, but I can already see how those companies lobby and whine about how regulations will “limit innovations” and “slow development.” Then some politicans take some under table deals just like how the petro industary does today.
FYI, there is no “better” way to use hydrogen that will result in extracting more energy from it than it physically contains and can be released via oxidation. This is not a matter of “development” or “breakthroughs.” It is physically impossible. The standard enthalpy change of combustion of hydrogen is 141.83 MJ/kg. Period. That’s it. That’s all you can ever get out of it, provided you achieve perfect efficiency (which currently we don’t). Ongoing research is surely working on getting is closer to 100% efficiency, but it will never get past it. You can’t defy the laws of physics.
Insofar as I am aware all current hydrogen vehicles already use fuel cells to generate electricity and use that to drive electric motors for motive power. No one is burning hydrogen in a combustion engine in vehicular applications. There are some power plants that are doing it, though, mostly as a mechanism for storing and later reusing excess energy generated from other sources. You can go cross-eyed reading up on it here, if you are so inclined.
There is the notion of the “hydrogen economy” floating around, that is the use of hydrogen as an energy storage and carrying medium – not, notably, as a fuel for actual generation of energy – but it’s pretty certain that outside of some limited applications this will always be a worse deal than just taking the energy in the form of electricity and putting it in a wire.
for one specific brand (specific model too ?)
Probably one platform (used for several models, sometimes shared between brands. For instance VW Polo, Audi A1, Seat Ibiza and Skoda Fabia are all based on the same platform).
Unless you have cars with modular battery packs, which do not exist right now.
No I would not. Chargers work just fine.
When a driver enters their automated station, the station will connect directly to the vehicle, drive and park it at the platform, have the depleted battery be dropped out from the bottom of the vehicle and replaced it with a fully charged battery while charging the user’s account — all within three minutes. The driver doesn’t even need to control or step out of the car.
That’s really cool, although I maintain that for urban travel the scooters with the hot-swappable battery under the seat are the ideal solution.
There was a scooter sharing company that drove around, swapping the batteries. It went out of business and now there are only the Bird style scooters.
If there were battery swapping stations, I’d definitely by me a bike.
Was waiting for Nio to make it state-side. Now, not so sure they will be allowed.
Youre going to buy poor QC american made giant electric monstrosities and you’re gonna like it.
I don’t oppose the idea of battery station, but who owns the battery then? When I bought the car, am I leasing the battery? How about used car?
It’s been a while since I’ve watched it myself, but remember them going into the ownership structure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w
There’s basically no way for them to not make it a subscription model.
The company (NIO) owns them and you are leasing the batteries. The car is cheaper this way, as you don’t buy the battery, but pay a monthly fee (~200+ in Germany).
You have a fixed number of swaps per month, above that you have to pay extra.
Source: colleague uses a car like this and explained the details.
I hope it’s not 200€ but it’s way higher than what I pay for the gas.
What if they EOL the battery and stops the leasing program? Now the perfectly fine car is non functional because it’s missing a battery. If I replace it, I’m just contributing more waste, not in materal but energy. Is that the “green” future we all after?
I would guess a swappable battery would be separated from the vehicle, similar to a gas bottle for a grill.
The battery would be rented for a small deposit and on swapping you only pay the energy + service fee.
I guess you could also buy one to own, but then could not swap that.
That’s how it would make sense, at least.
I will take ownership over leasing as a 200 miles range is more than enough for me. But you will see if the leasing model works out, they will only have leasing left for you as that’s a continous money flow. Or have the battery be super expensive to discourage you buy it.
I guess it would either work like a subscription fee or a one time fee per swap
You pay a monthly fee (lease) that contains a certain number of swaps per month, above which you pay extra. The car is also cheaper this way, as you are not paying for the battery
Subscription for my car? Don’t we have too much subscriptions already?
And neither solve the ownship problem, and a tons of other problems.
Subscription for fuel.
Gas is more like pas-as-you-go. Battery no so sure. And they are different by nature: gas can’t be reused, batteries can.
The energy inside both can’t be reused. Both a gas tank and battery can be refilled.
Gas is just easier to transfer between containers. Electricity needs it be moved inside its container.
Isn’t the whole thing about who owns the tank?
In my head the batteries would work somewhat like the electric scooters you can rent around big cities. There would be battery companies that pay stations to stock their batteries. Then EV owners pay for the juice they used, plus a little extra for the wear, plus a little extra to make it worth it for the battery companies when they swap to a new battery. So you’re essentially renting the batteries.
So I can give an example. Here in Taiwan, Gogoro has put up a lot of battery swap stations for their electric scooters. When you buy the scooter, it comes with removable batteries which you can charge on your own. Or, you can buy a monthly subscription on top of it that gives you access to those battery stations, where you can ride up to one and swap a pair of freshly charged batteries into your scooter. Subscription price is tiered by Ah per month, if you go over the limit you pay extra per Ah.
In this case, yes I think Gogoro is in charge of maintaining/replacing old batteries. Subscription is separate from the scooter cost, so buying used should not affect your ability to subscribe to the plan.
I love that system
it comes with removable batteries which you can charge on your own
so it is yours battery and go have additional batteries you can swap on the road with a subscription? That looks promising.
However, this works for scooters is because the battery pack is small enough for hand carry and install. It won’t be on typical 4-wheel vehicles as those are about a thousand pound. Even if we can modular and miniaturize it like how Gogoro does, where to install it is a big problem. Obviously we can’t install it in the front compartment as that will be a fire hazard when crash.
so it is your battery and got additional batteries you can swap on the road with a subscription?
No, you don’t get additional batteries. Once you start using the swapping service, the battery that came with your scooter goes into circulation. I suppose when you decide to stop subscribing to the service, the batteries that you have currently will be yours to keep. (I don’t own a Gogoro btw)
Yeah, and I agree that this system works great with scooters but not for cars.
Shame. It will be nice if I get a set of batteries I know well when the scooter used less frequently and charging at home makes more sense. Ratger gambling on what’s the quality/wear level of the next set will be.
Guess that’s how they introduce new batteries into the system, and cost them lesser. As long as there are new scooter owners and using the service, there will always be new batteries entering the circulation. All they have to do is pull out old batteries not fit for using out of the loop, and maybe repurpose them for something else, like grid power storage system.
Ratger gambling on what’s the quality/wear level of the next set will be.
You shouldn’t need to worry about getting bad batteries. Since it’s priced at an Ah/month basis (there are also km ridden per month plans), you can swap batteries whenever you feel like it. It is on Gogoro to maintain the health of the batteries, and swap in new ones when they go bad (or upgrade battery versions!).
All they have to do is pull out old batteries not fit for using out of the loop, and maybe repurpose them for something else, like grid power storage system.
That’s the idea!
You shouldn’t need to worry about getting bad batteries. Since it’s priced at an Ah/month basis (there are also km ridden per month plans), you can swap batteries whenever you feel like it. It is on Gogoro to maintain the health of the batteries, and swap in new ones when they go bad (or upgrade battery versions!).
I mean when I use the scooter less frequently (maybe I got a bigger car) or live somewhere else doesn’t have the station, thus canceling the subscription. On that, I guess I will be stuck on the last battery set I swapped in.
Ah I see. So I took a quick look at their contract and some articles, the ownership of the batteries is with Gogoro during your plan, and they give you the option to pause this plan (30 days minimum a time, 90 days max per year). If you decide to pause or cancel the plan, you will have to return the batteries you currently have, and they will give you spare batteries in return. I don’t think you’ll be guaranteed good batteries either way.
That’s like asking who owns a propane tanks for your grill. You own it while you have it.
When you get a new batter, you own the new one, and relinquish ownership of the previous one, paying for the electricity that’s on the new battery. AS LONG AS the battery that you’re relinquishing is substantially identical to the new battery.
That “substantially identical” is up for heavy debate.
Not just about “who owns it?” but also how does it work with insurance if something goes terribly wrong and who will bear the responsibility?
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Nah, we already use it:
https://www.nio.com/news/NIO-reaches-30-Power-Swap-Stations-in-Europe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w
We just need to take our heads out of the sand and take these challenges from China seriously in the EU and the US with proper coordinated reindustrialization policies.
I know it’s not “apples to apples” but swapping giant forktruck batteries (I assume they were lead-acid) has been done for decades too. I think we did it at Sam’s Club, at least for when the batteries wouldn’t charge.
- Book a swap in the app
- arrive in the lineup.
- serves one car at a time like an oil change
- the station has to constantly be charging the used batteries.
Or
Install 4-6 high speed chargers in the same spot and clear more cars faster .
Essentially the swap station is only better if you arrive without a lineup. The swap takes 7-10min and is manned. If you are one or two cars deep waiting you are better to have just found a charger
Why wouldn’t you compare like situations? It appears you chose a rather well set-up charging station vs. a poorly setup swapping station.
I didn’t picture an oil change when I imagined a battery swap station, I am not sure that should be the default or starting point.
neo is the ONLY company doing swap stations, and that is how they work… I also described current, available EVs with available chargers.
True, mass parallel charging can fulfill more peak demand faster, but from the point of view of the user, it would still be good to have the option to fill/exchange the battery quickly.
An EV6 on an capable fast charger can do 10% to 80% in 17 min
They need to make the swap faster / higher throughput or charging is still going to make more sense .
One thing that would speed it up would be if you could just drop the 1-ton battery by gravity (safely, which I understant is hard on the edges of any hooks holding it, maybe they could use a raised floor, which is what they do in NIO) and snap it back on in 30s or less for a total of 2m. The rest is just your usual parking, pulling the gas hose. Maybe make it go-through so you don’t have to manouver into place.
My colleague has a NIO car like this, he really likes it and uses the battery swap weekly. To my knowledge they have patented the tech.
If I bought an electric car, I would definitely consider NIO, as this option is great for long trips. In EU they have a couple of swap stations in Germany, but it’s still a long way to go in other countries.
