I thought this was such a cool idea when I first read about it … in 2014. Quite a few manufacturers have done trials and decided it wasn’t practical, so I don’t see how this is any different.
Now we’re at the point where batteries last longer than most people own vehicles, supercharger networks are widespread and expanding rapidly, charging is faster than ever, and we have Toyota’s fud promising 10 minute charging. We also have improved construction methods with batteries incorporated into the structure of vehicles rather than bolted on, on one end.
Swappable batteries fly in the face of this: we’d have to give up too much, and it assumes cooperation from all manufacturers and a huge infrastructure buildout that will just never happen. We’re well past the point of this looking like a good idea.
Let me throw this in the bin with the hydrogen fans, although there’s a place for that where batteries won’t scale. People keep complaining it is so difficult, time consuming, costly, to build out a better power grid for renewables and BEV, when it’s just adding flexibility and capacity to a system that’s already there and well understood. Yet you yahoos think it will somehow be faster and cheaper to invent an entirely new infrastructure, create agreement among many manufacturers worldwide, create new industries, and scale it out worldwide? What the everliving fuck?
Excellent, making it was easy to swap w battery is the way to go. I was getting hate in the ev community stating that making batteries replaceable and swappable was not a real problem.
I’m all for trying new things, however there’s tradeoffs with this approach I think that people may not be grasping that may change their mind if they want this.
the conversion to the vehicle will mean less space for battery because the housing, latches, connectors, etc have to be added to support an easily removable battery. So a 200 mile range battery may mean dropping to 150 mile range or less just to have the option to swap batteries.
Good EVs batteries use liquid thermal management, including the Fiat 500e noted in this article. It looks like this company is removing the liquid battery and replacing it with their own battery module. From the end of the article.
Updated December 7th 11:55AM ET: Ample’s modular batteries are compatible with any EV, the company says. A previous version of this story misstated this.
Without liquid thermal management the car is much more negatively affected by cold and hot days limiting range (and life of the battery which will increase costs of subscription).
So countries are pouring investment into charging networks… it would be interesting to know the thinking behind that versus this approach. One thing is certain though: this can only work at scale if manufacturers agree on standards for battery modules so that they can be swapped out by the same machinery. Notice that this is only for one specific model - the machine which removes the battery knows where the battery modules are and how to remove them. There would also presumably be some tradeoff for battery form factors which are designed to cram more in at the cost of making them harder to remove.
Stellantis on it’s own is pretty big, they own Fiat, PSA (Peugeot & Citroen), Opel, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep off top of my head. Some smaller brands too. They might be starting with Fiat 500e since 500 line is a budget one that could have price driven even lower by decoupling battery cost.
This is a different idea than I read from the article.
I read “swappable”, as a substitute for charging, and believe that has been proven impractical by every company that has tried it so far.
“Replaceable” batteries to support battery leasing and enable cheaper chemistry even if it doesn’t last as long, is an entirely different story. You’re not expecting frequent or fast changeout, you don’t need vast infrastructure or to stock every variation, you don’t need every brand to reach consensus , you just need to sell your dealer one or two machines and they only need to stock for what they sell. It gives dealers a reason to continue existing (which I don’t agree with but can understand)
Let’s say the infrastructure is there for this, and you don’t have to purchase the battery with a new EV…you just purchase a battery plan for like 100$ a month. It’d easily cut 10-20k off the cost of an EV up front.
Plus, quick charging isn’t quick. At best you’re looking at a 20 minute stop, and you’re praying a stall is open when you get there. This could solve that problem as well.
Just my personal opinion, Swapping sounds nice until you think about it. There’s a reason battery swaps haven’t been successful, and that is that for it to work, we need universally used battery types, that can be swapped by the same equipment. When batteries are not standardized, a swapping station can only serve very few models or would need huge stock of different types of swappable batteries. Both situations means great distance between swap stations, compared to universal charging stations. Apart from that there are other problems, like batteries will be unlikely to be owned, but need to be leased, usually adding extra cost.
Tesla worked with battery swaps too, but discarded the idea pretty quickly, and Tesla has been right more often than not on this kind of issue.
AFAIK BYD is working on it too, but my guess is even they will fail, despite being #1 China EV/Battery manufacturer.
I’d love to be wrong though.
Been wanting this for a while. Make a battery standard. You stop and swap out a charged battery for your used battery via a system like a drive through car wash. Pull into the bay and the machinery automatically does the work.
It may not be such a huge deal for cars that do mostly local driving, but I think it would be great for longer haul trucks to move into the EV world if the major highways had such stations along the route.
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I thought this was such a cool idea when I first read about it … in 2014. Quite a few manufacturers have done trials and decided it wasn’t practical, so I don’t see how this is any different.
Now we’re at the point where batteries last longer than most people own vehicles, supercharger networks are widespread and expanding rapidly, charging is faster than ever, and we have Toyota’s fud promising 10 minute charging. We also have improved construction methods with batteries incorporated into the structure of vehicles rather than bolted on, on one end.
Swappable batteries fly in the face of this: we’d have to give up too much, and it assumes cooperation from all manufacturers and a huge infrastructure buildout that will just never happen. We’re well past the point of this looking like a good idea.
Let me throw this in the bin with the hydrogen fans, although there’s a place for that where batteries won’t scale. People keep complaining it is so difficult, time consuming, costly, to build out a better power grid for renewables and BEV, when it’s just adding flexibility and capacity to a system that’s already there and well understood. Yet you yahoos think it will somehow be faster and cheaper to invent an entirely new infrastructure, create agreement among many manufacturers worldwide, create new industries, and scale it out worldwide? What the everliving fuck?
Excellent, making it was easy to swap w battery is the way to go. I was getting hate in the ev community stating that making batteries replaceable and swappable was not a real problem.
I’m all for trying new things, however there’s tradeoffs with this approach I think that people may not be grasping that may change their mind if they want this.
the conversion to the vehicle will mean less space for battery because the housing, latches, connectors, etc have to be added to support an easily removable battery. So a 200 mile range battery may mean dropping to 150 mile range or less just to have the option to swap batteries.
Good EVs batteries use liquid thermal management, including the Fiat 500e noted in this article. It looks like this company is removing the liquid battery and replacing it with their own battery module. From the end of the article.
Updated December 7th 11:55AM ET: Ample’s modular batteries are compatible with any EV, the company says. A previous version of this story misstated this.Without liquid thermal management the car is much more negatively affected by cold and hot days limiting range (and life of the battery which will increase costs of subscription).
So countries are pouring investment into charging networks… it would be interesting to know the thinking behind that versus this approach. One thing is certain though: this can only work at scale if manufacturers agree on standards for battery modules so that they can be swapped out by the same machinery. Notice that this is only for one specific model - the machine which removes the battery knows where the battery modules are and how to remove them. There would also presumably be some tradeoff for battery form factors which are designed to cram more in at the cost of making them harder to remove.
Stellantis on it’s own is pretty big, they own Fiat, PSA (Peugeot & Citroen), Opel, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep off top of my head. Some smaller brands too. They might be starting with Fiat 500e since 500 line is a budget one that could have price driven even lower by decoupling battery cost.
This is a different idea than I read from the article.
I read “swappable”, as a substitute for charging, and believe that has been proven impractical by every company that has tried it so far.
“Replaceable” batteries to support battery leasing and enable cheaper chemistry even if it doesn’t last as long, is an entirely different story. You’re not expecting frequent or fast changeout, you don’t need vast infrastructure or to stock every variation, you don’t need every brand to reach consensus , you just need to sell your dealer one or two machines and they only need to stock for what they sell. It gives dealers a reason to continue existing (which I don’t agree with but can understand)
Let’s say the infrastructure is there for this, and you don’t have to purchase the battery with a new EV…you just purchase a battery plan for like 100$ a month. It’d easily cut 10-20k off the cost of an EV up front.
Plus, quick charging isn’t quick. At best you’re looking at a 20 minute stop, and you’re praying a stall is open when you get there. This could solve that problem as well.
It’s an interesting idea.
Just my personal opinion, Swapping sounds nice until you think about it. There’s a reason battery swaps haven’t been successful, and that is that for it to work, we need universally used battery types, that can be swapped by the same equipment. When batteries are not standardized, a swapping station can only serve very few models or would need huge stock of different types of swappable batteries. Both situations means great distance between swap stations, compared to universal charging stations. Apart from that there are other problems, like batteries will be unlikely to be owned, but need to be leased, usually adding extra cost.
Tesla worked with battery swaps too, but discarded the idea pretty quickly, and Tesla has been right more often than not on this kind of issue. AFAIK BYD is working on it too, but my guess is even they will fail, despite being #1 China EV/Battery manufacturer.
I’d love to be wrong though.
Been wanting this for a while. Make a battery standard. You stop and swap out a charged battery for your used battery via a system like a drive through car wash. Pull into the bay and the machinery automatically does the work.
It may not be such a huge deal for cars that do mostly local driving, but I think it would be great for longer haul trucks to move into the EV world if the major highways had such stations along the route.