Battery BUNKS

[dangdongho1]

I am an entrepreneur From Bangalore , India. There was a statement by the Indian Transport Ministry recently where in it is proposed to make electric cars compulsory in India by 2030 and phasing out current Petrol/Diesel Vehicles. As a total layman, it got me thinking that this was a very difficult proposal to implement and will definitely be postponed a number of times but will have to be implemented sooner or later. When ever it does happen with, India's huge population the demand for such cars will be huge but will also bring up numerous challenges along with it.

In order to make such a proposal feasible in a cost concise Country like India , the high prices of the batteries is going to be a problem. Added to that the availability of charging slot at public places as well as at our own private parking is going to be difficult as 50% of the cars are parked on the roads .
The only solution to this complex problem will be that the manufacturing company sells cars without the battery unit thus reducing the cost of the car considerably. Instead they should provide battery slots which are very convenient to remove and install.

Now the battery manufacturing companies come into the picture. They can appoint Dealers/ service points / rental outlets just like current Petrol/ Diesel/ Gas pumps who will have a customer base by collecting a certain amount as annual subscription and a one time deposit for the battery unit and give them a subscription where in they can go to any such service point and give the old battery whose charge is about to expire and take a new unit instead. If the current cost of fully charging one battery unit is say about 1 USD the service point can charge them that 1 USD plus an additional 1 USD or what ever is a commercially viable amount considering the Cost of battery/ life of battery and profit of the service point.
Perhaps a similar model is feasible for the other countries also.

 

[ewoodrick]

It is an interesting proposal, but there are some finer points that may make the proposal unrealistic.
I see one of the bigger problems is swapping out the batteries. It seems as if you think that you can just swap out the battery. While this was possible on the Model S, it got removed on the Model 3. It seems as if the cost and advantages of swapping out the battery just weren't feasible.
For a number of reasons, the batteries are on the undercarriage of the car, this makes it just about impossible for users to swap out. Maybe you can move it somewhere else, but that still has issues. Because the batteries are really heavy, you can only carry so many miles in your hand. Is it worth the effort to get 10 miles by switching out a 1 ft square, 30 lb box (educated guess at size and weight). I don't think so.

By the way, the batteries really aren't that expensive, they probably represent only 10-20% of the cost of the vehicle.

One of the bigger commercialization issues who owns the batteries and what happens when batteries go bad. Do I drop it off at another charging location?

I think that you end up with a solution that becomes significantly more expensive to operate than petrol.