JAC Motors, a Volkswagen-backed Chinese automaker, unveiled the first mass-produced EV with a sodium-ion battery through its new Yiwei brand. Although sodium-ion battery tech has a lower density than lithium-ion, its lower costs, simpler and more abundant supplies and superior cold-weather performance could help accelerate mass EV adoption.
I’m still dreaming of seeing EVs with flexible battery space, which users can fill according to their needs.
Like a car comes with space for 10x 10 kWh slots.
If 20 kWh serve your usual needs, the other spaces remain empty.
And if you plan longer trips and don’t want to recharge each 100 miles, you put in additional batteries. Those batteries don’t need to be owned, but can be rented.
Ideally there are lots of battery rental stations, where you can get charged batteries and instead of recharging the batteries in the EV, the rent’n’swap stations recharge them.
During (EV) wise low use times, these stations can provide a buffer to the energy grid.
…one can dream…
You know, putting and removing batteries would be a very tedious task and I really doubt that many owners will bother with it.
It wouldn’t be necessary very often unless you’d want to take advantage of swapping instead of reloading.
Idk about renting, sounds like ass.
A core charge would make more sense, like swapping propane tanks you get a discount for having the empty core with you.
Wpuld you rather purchase an 80 kWh battery, alrhough you need most of the time only 20 kWh or purchase only 20 kWh and rent/swap some batteries when needed?
I’m no talking about renting all battery capacity the whole year, just the extra capacity for the 2-4 weeks in the year when long-distance rides are in the mix.