There are significant logistics here. How many batteries should be stocked in any one place.
Batteries are large. So you’re also talking about a lot of space.
At the same time you still need to build out the electric capacity to charge those batteries.
The number of batteries you would need would need to be some multiple of the actual number of cars sold. So if there are 300 cars sold, you probably need something like 1200-1500 batteries in the same city just so a car doesn’t have to travel unreasonable distances to do a swap.
The multiple is probably higher and it gets much worse spread out over the entire country/world. Thats burdening each car sale with multiples costs of the most expensive component in the car.
It’s mechanical, so there are likely to be more breakdowns and other issues.
Battery replacement requires changing the car design and leads to a design that’s almost certainly much less protected from the elements or requires the addition of expensive protection, both in terms of the cost of the additional protection and the weight of the protection.
People tend to treat replaceable batteries poorly.
Battery replacement is just not a good choice relative to the much simpler ability to pump in electricity.
batteries are not light, that would be wasting a lot of energy to shuffle batteries around. not great for the environment.
battery packs are often structural components, this idea would make that impossible, reducing durability and safety.
not all batteries are identical. there are many different capacities and wear levels. imagine bringing in your new car for electricity and getting an old battery back. the battery is a huge portion of the cost of the car- now you have an old one!
> battery packs are often structural components, this idea would make that impossible
This is not true. A battery can be structural and swap-able. The structure is determined by what it has to survive in a crash. While standing still in a battery swap station, your car does not need to clear those requirements.
So as long as it crash safe once the new battery is put into place, your are completely fine.
One has to make a lot of capacity decisions around how well the unreplaced battery is going to perform years out if they are complex to replace, lugging around all that extra is also not good for (the environment or) a consumer who may be better served by half capacity batteries replaced twice as often, etc.
If you make them swappable then your concerns don't really exist. The service station would handle testing batteries and recycling falling ones, they would be uniform by design and it wouldn't matter if you got an older set since you'd be getting them swapped next stop anyhow.
well, make the car companies adhere to the new standards. make the batteries standardised.
the batteries could be replaced at the station, or whoever uses your battery, that individual pays you for using it... and the station only gets a cut.
It doesn't seem to work for cars but may do for heavy trucks. https://www.januselectric.com.au/ are doing it on a small scale. One advantage is trucks are built for loading heavy goods by forklift so doing that with a battery is not a big deal. Cars less so.
from horses mouth 2020 https://www.nio.com/blog/past-present-chinas-ev-subsidies " Electric vehicles that utilize battery-swapping technologies are not limited to the 300,000 yuan price limit and will still qualify for the subsidies."
All EV specially in China have received subsidizes. Both swapping and charging have been subsidized at different times in different places. I would say battery swapping has received far less focus then other charging.
Just linking a few articles about limited subsidizes doesn't mean the company wouldn't exists or would be bankrupt if not for subsidizes. And some of the articles don't even specifically mention a lot of money.
First article, 40% subsidize on some stations in a single city. The build most of those stations before this new subsidy. So at best this articles shows that they might get some subsidy in the future.
Second articles, a few cities give out subsidizes for cars with battery swapping. Literally a pilot project that has only recently started. Third article just mentions the same pilot program.
Forth article, small change in regulation to existing subsidizes making it slightly more attractive to have a battery swappable car. Since 2020 regulations about what gets how much subsidy have changed many times over in China. And have been in general reduced by a whole lot as China wanted to get its industry of subsidies.
We are talking about a market of millions vehicles with billions of money put into intensives and infrastructure. With government putting in billions as well. Such as the US with the 7500$ tax credit.
To call them specifically 'heavenly' subsidized is just plane inaccurate, they got some subsidy, like every other EV maker. Swapping has got some funding once in a while, but its far from the primary thing that gets subsidies. The company didn't do swapping because it received the most subsidizes.
That's the same wrong argument people made about Tesla for years. Link to any article about the word 'subsidy' and then claim that the whole business only exists because of that.
Its not at all like hydrogen in California. NIO alone makes more cars then global hydrogen sales.
And just to be clear, I don't even like swapping or think that its a good idea but that it has bankrupt every company that tried it or its only viable because of some massive subsidy (that you fail to prove exists) is completely false. Nio has existed since 2014. Unless you can actually point to a subsidy program, specifically for swapping, that funneled multiple billions of $ into Nio pockets, I'm gone call bullshit.
bwahahaha, nobody cares about why it can't be done. make it possible. china been using replacable battery bikes for a decade. and they also using it for cars.
If you can get 250 miles between 15 and 85% charge, and you can charge to 80% in about 20 minutes, it's more than good enough. Just space charging stations closer together and more chargers.
