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Battery Swapping Revisited

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Getting electric vehicles fully charged usually takes hours, while empty batteries can be swapped for full ones in just minutes. Thus, battery swapping has become a major alternative to charging pillars. Dozens of models, from carmakers including Nio, BAIC and FAW, are now capable of battery swapping.

NIO plans to manufacture in-house developed high-voltage battery packs to better compete with Tesla in its home market, as well as in Europe, which is NIO's first overseas market outside of China.
 
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Getting electric vehicles fully charged usually takes hours, while empty batteries can be swapped for full ones in just minutes. Thus, battery swapping has become a major alternative to charging pillars. Dozens of models, from carmakers including Nio, BAIC and FAW, are now capable of battery swapping.

NIO plans to manufacture in-house developed high-voltage battery packs to better compete with Tesla in its home market, as well as in Europe, which is NIO's first overseas market outside of China.

I see this like swapping portable propane tanks for home BBQ grills, where, the first time, you swap your "almost brand new, cared for" propane tank for some "beat up old dented" tank at the grocery store or something, then never have a "brand new" one again.

This may interest some people, but certainly not me, I would never (ever ever ever ever ever) do something like this, even if it was offered. I take care of my stuff better than that, and do not see a situation where a battery swap would be preferable to fast charging.
 
It all depends. It may well work like swapping rechargeable batteries in your RC car.
But those are easy to swap and standard.

Economy of scale is key, and that means that NIO should convince other OEMs to accept its batteries.
Very much like we used to have a battle which videotape system would be the industry standard - Betamax or VHS.

Or operating systems for mobile phones.

Israeli company Better Place has tried the battery swapping... and went belly up.


 
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SF-based Ample says that modular batteries will do the trick.
"For Ample, the difference is in the modularization of the battery pack and how that changes the relationship with the automakers that would use the technology. Hassounah, Ample's co-founder and chief executive, said: "The approach we've taken... is to modularize the battery and then we have an adapter plate that is the structural element of the battery that has the same shape of the battery, same bolt pattern and same software interface".

 
Nothing you have posted in any way, shape or form addresses the "getting questionable used battery" aspect. The only way this works is if no one cares about their battery, because they dont own the car and are only subscribing to a car service where they dont have "their" car, but "a car".

If you think "no one cares about their battery and is fine taking a swap like this", I have at least 100 threads on "my battery!?!?!??!" here on TMC to share with you, including one in the model 3 subforum thats over 250 pages long.

People do care about their battery (too much actually), so "swapping the battery like its an RC car" only works because YOU own both of those batteries.

For a rental fleet, or robotaxis (which have nothing to do with individual owners), perhaps. That is the use case, people who dont care about their batteries, which does not include anyone thats actually buying the car for personal use.
 
Nothing you have posted in any way, shape or form addresses the "getting questionable used battery" aspect. The only way this works is if no one cares about their battery, because they dont own the car and are only subscribing to a car service where they dont have "their" car, but "a car".

If you think "no one cares about their battery and is fine taking a swap like this", I have at least 100 threads on "my battery!?!?!??!" here on TMC to share with you, including one in the model 3 subforum thats over 250 pages long.

People do care about their battery (too much actually), so "swapping the battery like its an RC car" only works because YOU own both of those batteries.

For a rental fleet, or robotaxis (which have nothing to do with individual owners), perhaps. That is the use case, people who dont care about their batteries, which does not include anyone thats actually buying the car for personal use.
Something that is not mentioned is that to swap batteries you need more than one battery for every ev out there. For an industry that is battery constrained that doesn't work either from the parts or the economic standpoint.
 
…to swap batteries you need more than one battery for every ev out there…
But to run a fleet, like taxi service, you have fewer cars. So yeah, more batteries than cars but still fewer batteries overall because fewer cars.

Tesla had an experimental battery swap station at Harris Ranch in the early days. They shut it down pretty quick. I never heard why…
My understanding was that the swap station enabled picking up some grant money and that the station was never intended to be commercially viable. But I do love the swap idea for the track. Like pitting for tires.
 
Yeah, perhaps I should apologize for the repeated posting about battery swapping. But I wanted to trigger comments,
hear about the pluses and minuses of swapping. Thanks a bunch, people.

There isnt any need to apologize (at least that I see). Nothing wrong with a discussion, and I think its an interesting proposition, personally (even though I wouldnt do it, as I said).

Certainly much better than another thread about "I can only go 200 miles on a full charge?!?!?!" or "why am I not getting my range?" for sure.
 
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It's definitely a paradigm change, but it can work if the cars are sold cheaper and under a battery leasing program.

They'd need to guarantee a minimum battery quality and then ship new cars with a used battery to really hammer in the fact that if you're not satisfied with the battery, just go in and switch it out.

For many folks, I think it would relieve them of a big worry of EVs -- that they might need to pay for an expensive battery replacement.

All that said, I think in practice it just won't happen. You'd need an industry wide standard, and each swapping station would likely end up having to hold on to tons of different battery formats. With charging speed and battery capacity going up every year, I don't see it becoming widespread.
 
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It's definitely a paradigm change, but it can work if the cars are sold cheaper and under a battery leasing program.

They'd need to guarantee a minimum battery quality and then ship new cars with a used battery to really hammer in the fact that if you're not satisfied with the battery, just go in and switch it out.

For many folks, I think it would relieve them of a big worry of EVs -- that they might need to pay for an expensive battery replacement.

All that said, I think in practice it just won't happen. You'd need an industry wide standard, and each swapping station would likely end up having to hold on to tons of different battery formats. With charging speed and battery capacity going up every year, I don't see it becoming widespread.
A lease could result in higher overall operating costs over the long term for the purchaser. The lease costs are based on cost of that battery amortized over a time period. So, at "n" months you are leasing will hit the cost of a battery. You just pay it in smaller months increments. When I was in the business computer products business, we set n at 13 or 20 months. Many people leased for 36 months so it was a very profitable.
 
Something that is not mentioned is that to swap batteries you need more than one battery for every ev out there. For an industry that is battery constrained that doesn't work either from the parts or the economic standpoint.

It's definitely a paradigm change, but it can work if the cars are sold cheaper and under a battery leasing program.

They'd need to guarantee a minimum battery quality and then ship new cars with a used battery to really hammer in the fact that if you're not satisfied with the battery, just go in and switch it out.

For many folks, I think it would relieve them of a big worry of EVs -- that they might need to pay for an expensive battery replacement.

All that said, I think in practice it just won't happen. You'd need an industry wide standard, and each swapping station would likely end up having to hold on to tons of different battery formats. With charging speed and battery capacity going up every year, I don't see it becoming widespread.


Ample says it has a modular approach to the battery swapping, to deal with the issue of so many EVs, so many battery different battery packs.
Bit they do need to work together with car makers in advance. And it does offer Level 1-2 recharging on top of the swapping.

Asfar as the 'paradigm shift' concerned, that may be true if:

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3 year old video. As pointed early in this thread things have changed.

Battery swaps could be interesting in this scenario. I wonder how they would get hundreds of extra batteries pre-positioned to remote locations for a swap on surge for a few hours (Wed evening and Sunday afternoon) on Thanksgiving weekend as shown on the video. Trucking them in would be expensive. And what do they do with all those batteries on "normal" days? EV charging or swapping have lots of operational issues to deal with sharp, short duration demand surges.
 
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3 year old video. As pointed early in this thread things have changed.

Battery swaps could be interesting in this scenario. I wonder how they would get hundreds of extra batteries pre-positioned to remote locations for a swap on surge for a few hours (Wed evening and Sunday afternoon) on Thanksgiving weekend as shown on the video.

Battery swapping OEMs like NIO and Geely hope to work together with car makers on this.
Ample says it can produce a battery that can be easily modified into various sizes.
IMO, it only works if battery swapping could be as easy and 'fluid' as filling up.
But then you have to use a standard battery, like if it's a module.

1 for a tiny EV
3 for SUV type electric cars