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Automatic Battery Swaps instead of charging

Rocinante

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What are people's thoughts on these Automatic Battery Swaps for EV's. Is this the future or a pointless exercise ? It seems to me to be a bit pointless.

As battery technology improves, range will improve, and presumably charging times will decrease as well, so you'll be charging less and it will be quicker to do it.
Having a system where the whole battery is removed from the car and swapped over, requires a very expensive "charging station", with machines to do the work, and storage for all these batteries they'll be charging ready for use, compared to just installing a normal charging station.
Your car will need to be compatible, so are all the manufactures going to agree to a specification or are you going to be limited to a station for your 'battery type'.
What happens if there's been a rush on that morning and there are no batteries left. Presumably you can charge as normal, but that would put a dent in your schedule if you were expecting to be in and out in 10 minutes as opposed to being able to plan.

The benefits it talks about are:
  • No waiting to charge, but I can't see banks of these like you have for charging station, but just have one slot due to the complexity and size required, so no doubt there would be queuing in busy periods, and as I said before, as the technology improves, charging times are dropping anyway.
  • It also discusses always having a good battery, but at the moment, people are expecting to have the SOC remain fairly healthy for the car's life, so is this just trying to play on peoples fears
  • Reduced purchase cost as you won't own the battery, but you'll be paying a lease on the battery, so you'll still end up paying for it either way.
  • It doesn't mention it but the main advantage I can see would be for people who can't charge at home, but the other drawbacks still affects this, and there are other solutions to try to help with this ie lamppost charging.
The whole system seems to be an overly complicated solution to a problem being solved by other means, or am I missing something ?
 
It’s not a case of a battery swap, it’s the entire battery pack with its thermal control system and BMS and anything else that links it to the car. No two companies manufacture the same battery pack and the technologies inside those battery packs will be unique to each manufacturer. As such, each battery swap centre would need several of every type of battery pack.

It is just not a viable solution to a problem that no longer exists now that we see Rapid Charging Stations popping up everywhere and high speed charging with new BEVs. Even the “budget” MG ZS EV with its 73kWh battery has 94kW charging.

I see Tesla has also starting opening up its SuperChargers in the UK to other CCS supporting cars, including the ZS EV. 15 of their sites have now opened supporting non-Tesla charging. The Tesla App now provides access to their chargers for non-Tesla cars. About £0.60 /kWh, or £0.50 /kWh with a subscription.
 
It's a solution to a problem that will not exist long enough for it to be viable.
Battery tech is advancing at such a rapid rate that longer range and vastly quicker charging are almost literally just round the corner.
 
I see Tesla has also starting opening up its SuperChargers in the UK to other CCS supporting cars

Not yet. This from Tesla as recently as May 5th:

Please be advised that we are currently testing a pilot project in Norway, France and the Netherlands where our Supercharging network is open to non-Tesla vehicles at selected chargers.

You can find a list / overview via the following link .

Currently no Superchargers in the UK are open to non-Tesla vehicles and we do not have any information when / if this will be opened.

Bit of a bummer.

Oooerrrr. Update: looks like there ARE a few Tesla sites open to non-Tesla cars.

 
Not yet. This from Tesla as recently as May 5th:



Bit of a bummer.

Oooerrrr. Update: looks like there ARE a few Tesla sites open to non-Tesla cars.

Yes, they have opened up 15 sites in the UK.

On the Tesla App …

7B5E9739-2A9C-46D4-8D25-82FF0D22D0DC.png


Locations:

DD45DAB0-0595-4BD9-8DF6-90D3E8E314D7.png
 
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The other elephant in the room is the number of packs that can be stored and charged at a single location is relatively small unless very high power is available. NIO have suffered a number of fires at these stations.
But the concept works well with the battery lease idea which keeps down the initial cost to the consumer.
 
I reckon that within 5 years cars will be capable of nearly a 1000 mile on one charge. Fingers crossed.
 
I reckon that within 5 years cars will be capable of nearly a 1000 mile on one charge. Fingers crossed.
I doubt it will go that high (happy if I'm proved wrong : ) but 500 will be easily reachable and 500 is way more than even most professional drivers would do in a day.
 
We all seem to be thinking the same thing, but people are investing money in the system, millions I would expect. They must see something in it.
Perhaps it's an advertising scheme as much as anything else, to convert ICE owners.
The opportunity of a 5 minute 'recharge' gets them to switch from ICE, but in practice, in a short period of time they'll probably just charge the same as other EVs, and they won't need to install that many stations.
 
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