Tesla bus with changeable battery

[Ssoccal]

i have a doubt. Why tesla is not hardly participating in electric urban buses.
I can imagine that urban busses usually take a round trip of 10-30 km.
That mean that this busses can have a small battery that allow them move 30-50 km (for safer trip) then, once the bus is preparing for the next trip, it get a fully charged battery.
Since the urban bus must stop so frecuently on the same place it is easy to replace his empty battery for a fully charged one.

In this way you have enough time between a trip and the next one to charge the battery and get prepared for the next trip.

For instance 1 bus with 2 small battery can be enough to travel all day long. And since small battery are chipper your total cost will be reduced.

 

[Tiger]

This might be too easy for there to be a competetive market. Quite some companies making electric buses China Electric Bus Sales Still Exploding

"Where there is muck, there is brass" - Maybe buses just aren't mucky enough.

 

[NeverFollow]

BYD delivers first massive 60-ft all-electric bus in the US: 275 miles range on 547 kWh battery pack

 

[Ssoccal]

BYD delivers first massive 60-ft all-electric bus in the US: 275 miles range on 547 kWh battery pack

The issue of this bus is the battery cost. I'm talking about 27 miles and 54 kWh battery pack
And you change it for every trip.

 

[Rowan256]

I think the whole market should use a standard when it comes to swappeble batteries, oil compagnies have the power and money to do this, and I actually advice them to do it. Because it will be their only way to remain of value in the future.
I also think that car compagnies should be forced to say how much has been charged in kW on what location, this way all such bills can work perfectly online and automatically, you don't need to make some kind of computer pin network thing with pinpasses and things like that, it should go automatically because the car is on your name. The battery knows how much is charged, the car knows it's location, the charger knows the exact amount of kW he has offered and the car knows how much is charged, all of them can work online, so why all the additional work?

 

[Ssoccal]

I think the whole market should use a standard when it comes to swappeble batteries, oil compagnies have the power and money to do this, and I actually advice them to do it. Because it will be their only way to remain of value in the future.
I also think that car compagnies should be forced to say how much has been charged in kW on what location, this way all such bills can work perfectly online and automatically, you don't need to make some kind of computer pin network thing with pinpasses and things like that, it should go automatically because the car is on your name. The battery knows how much is charged, the car knows it's location, the charger knows the exact amount of kW he has offered and the car knows how much is charged, all of them can work online, so why all the additional work?

The interesting thing on a urban bus, is that all busses are owned by the same company, all buses stop on the same place to have a maintenance between trips.
So you already can have an standard on all your company buses. If you own 500 buses you have an standar and a typical battery pack to use on all your busses.
If you use battery of 10kwh each bus can use 1-3 batteries per trip and exchange it after finish I 5 minutes.
A battery of 10 kWh is cheap enough the the bus is also chip.

The idea here is to standardise the battery and the process to change the battery.
Since anyone can do a electric bus.

 

[Rowan256]

The interesting thing on a urban bus, is that all busses are owned by the same company, all buses stop on the same place to have a maintenance between trips.
So you already can have an standard on all your company buses. If you own 500 buses you have an standar and a typical battery pack to use on all your busses.
If you use battery of 10kwh each bus can use 1-3 batteries per trip and exchange it after finish I 5 minutes.
A battery of 10 kWh is cheap enough the the bus is also chip.

The idea here is to standardise the battery and the process to change the battery.
Since anyone can do a electric bus.

Exactly, and I also think that these kind of battery swap stations should be created in a industrial area, pretty much every city got a industrial area (or well, in Europe). This way the grid only needs to be slightly adapted in industrial area and not in every individual his house.
On top of that, when you do it in massive numbers (a milion solar panels at once for example) it will become much cheaper to install. Next to that, the roofs over there are usually perfect for solar panels (no trees, flat, name it) and the batteries will be balance it straight away, the batteries can react instantly if a cloud passes by, or when the sun is shining very brightly. This way normal people barely need to change anything about their homes and still get green (or far more green) energy.
Powerstations can cooperate with these stations as well, if they accidently made too much energy, or not enough, the batteries can charge, stop charging, or even give back.
Next to all this, superchargers (and even much higher as that) can easely be installed here as well.

Next to all this, if a better battery has been created in 5 years, then you can simply get the old ones out and the new ones in, as long as the shape and voltage is the same, the total kW is allowed to change, so it's future proof as well.

Also, trucks usually drive in industrial area anyway, so it's easy to access for them as well.
I think that will eventually be the cheapest way to get the entire world almost completely green.
The only bad thing could be snow in the winter, then the solar panels don't offer energy any more and the people usually use more energy.

 

[Ssoccal]

Rowan, to create a "public" swappable battery system is much complex. But a private one is really easy if you own a group of busses (all equals). Then once many private companies have the same standard, you can create a public system.

This is for me the intresting with urban buses.
And in the other way you can avoid so expensive a buses since they are cheap (you avoid the battery cost that is the more expensive part of an electric bus).
Just small battery standar for all the model.
Then even the cars, trucks and any other can use the same standardised battery.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Proterra's model is to have more tolerant batteries and high-powered charging stations instead.
Either that or swapping requires extra investment in equipment.

Both swap stations or fast chargers are betting on technological failure, assuming that batteries will always be expensive. But batteries continue to fall in price and as the price falls and the batteries continue to improve, the value of the trade-off weakens, with the long-range buses being more flexible.

 

[Rowan256]

Rowan, to create a "public" swappable battery system is much complex. But a private one is really easy if you own a group of busses (all equals). Then once many private companies have the same standard, you can create a public system.

This is for me the intresting with urban buses.
And in the other way you can avoid so expensive a buses since they are cheap (you avoid the battery cost that is the more expensive part of an electric bus).
Just small battery standar for all the model.
Then even the cars, trucks and any other can use the same standardised battery.

A public battery is the only way compagnies like Shell can survive and also the only way for long drive trucks to keep working. Most compagnies simply aren't big enough to have battery swap locations on every place. Compagnies like Shell are currently still capable of playing with 10s of bilions, buscompagnies aren't, but are capable of adepting their vehicles in such a way that a truck battery could fit in their bus as well. I bet Shell is willing to do it as well.

 

[djplong]

You don't NEED battery swapping when you have fixed routes. The time a bus spends at the terminus of each route is MORE than enough time to charge a battery.

Battery swapping technology adds more expense and adds something else to the vehicle than can 'go wrong'. You can put up a high-speed charging station for WAY less money than building a swap-station.

...and besides, the same charging station can charge a 9-person bus, a 25-person bus, a 48-person bus... Battery swapping? You'd need a different form factor for each type of vehicle and that adds FURTHER expense and complexity.

 

[Rowan256]

Oké, but then it doesn't work with green energy, since green energy is usually unpredictable.
Also, trucks are forced to wait well over an hour, even with unlimited energy because of the current battery limits.
Truck trailers in Europe are very very similar shaped, I estimate that 80% of the trucks got 6 wheels on the back, a big space (ideal for a replaceble battery) in front of that and then the truck itself.

 

[NCAviator]

I think Tesla is starting with the wrong truck. A long haul Semi Truck is not the best first vehicle. I think Fleet vehicles are a better first bet. I would start with School Buses. They travel fixed routes. These could be planned for the battery range. They all park in the same place at night. They are only used a limited number of hours/miles per day. They are government funded. Parents would be supportive to have non-fume vehicles. Tesla could do what they do best and make them safer than today and provide more software features. Like bus tracking for the fleet. Parents would know when the buss is arriving at their stop. This would be a huge public relations win for Tesla. After school buses they can move to other fleet vehicles.

Elon: School Buses not Semi-trailer trucks first.

 

[arcus]

Buses are an appealing target for EV conversion, for sure. If Tesla masters the technology around semi it will open the door for everyone else to adopt it afterwards. I don't think though that Tesla should divide its attention any further at this moment. They need to focus on making model 3 a success and turn the company into profitable and successful business before venturing into new areas. This requires a careful balance between being visionary and surviving in soon to be competitive market.

 

[Rowan256]

Buses, trucktrailers, name it are very similar shaped, especially in Europe, if you design a swappeble battery system, you can give them all a similar shaped battery and that could give you a "charge" time of less then 10 minits and a range extention of about a 1000km (600 miles), if the truck and the trailer themself contain a battery as well, this could lead into a... About a 1200 mile range. Even if the truck battery is worn out, if there comes a new development in the battery world, or anything like that.

 

[arnis]

Battery swap stations will cost a fortune.
<100kWh batteries will not handle the load from huge vehicles.
Coolant system is not swappable that easily (reliability suffers).
There must be much more packs per vehicle.
Packs must still be charged very fast (or there needs to be even more batteries)
Smaller packs will be cycled too much too fast and must be replaced too soon.
Swapping is a mechanical procedure requiring time, which can not be used for charging,
though also wastes electricity and other resources.
Designing one battery-fits-all almost never works. It doesn't even work with AA's, nor even LR44.


List goes on and on.
OppCharge already proved that it works well enough.
There is no technical reason to have very expensive swapping stations.
Swapping is similar hype as hydrogen vehicle. It doesn't make financial sense.
There is no need to "refill within 5-10 minutes". Nor is there any need* to have
wireless charging roadways. Nor is there any need* for Solar Freakin Roadways.

*actually it doesn't make any sense at all. Financially and fundamentally.