vandy1981
Well-known member
It's already being done elsewhere. A Chinese car company (NIO) has a swappable battery system. It takes around 5-10 minutes to change the battery and NIO handles battery maintenance should a cell go bad. Tesla piloted the technology several years ago but decided not to bring it to market.The Government loves to FORCE the auto industry to do things… why don’t they FORCE them to standardize on a swappable battery pack for EVs AND THEN sink piles of our tax dollars into building swapping stations?
I'm not convinced this is scalable for light vehicles though and won't be necessary as battery tech improves. The rate limiting factor for EVs is the battery pack and you would need to have some multiple of battery packs for a system like this. Not to mention the added maintenance and infrastructure that would be required for battery swap stations.
We're rapidly approaching a world where the average EV will be able to charge 10-80% in under 20 minutes, so there's really not that much of a time benefit for swappable packs. We're already there with the Hyundai Auto Group E-GMP and VW Auto Group J1 platforms and it will continue to get better as battery chemistries improve and the fabled solid state batteries come to market.
I'm not sure the battery maintenance benefits are that important either since all vehicles in the USA have a minimum 8y/100K battery warranty.
Swappable batteries make a lot of sense for HD vehicles like semis, though. I could easily imagine Amazon or UPS having battery swap stations at their distribution hubs.
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