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Comment by gonzo41

4 years ago

If the EV market could agree on a battery size and configuration, then maybe doing a full swap of a battery could be done like an f1 Pitstop.

Similar to those electric scooters in Asia, Just imagine if you rolled over a pitstop and had the battery quicky taken out from below the car and then a new battery placed back in.

That sort of system could change the economics of building an ev as you could move to a model where users don't really own the battery they rent it for a while until they need a swap.

Or electric cargo bicycles. Because every bike on the road is one less massive car.

9 comments

gonzo41

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PaulRobinson  4 years ago

You’re making the mistake of average use cases.

Your first idea requires new, expensive infrastructure that will need maintenance due to mechanical parts. Given charging points are regularly broken at the moment, I don’t have high hopes. But even if we overcame that: it’s impractical in almost every major city in the World, because you’d have to drastically alter existing spaces, such as filling stations.

This might work in your context, and many others. It might even work for the “average” use case. But for 75% of the developed World (where the EV market is the fastest growing), I’m not convinced.

And the electric cargo bike argument - or bikes in general - work great for the “average” journey, but not many people actually take that journey.

My most frequent drive is 200+ miles in normally wet or cold weather. My next most frequent is 15+ miles in baking hot Summer sunshine in a heavily congested city where I need aircon. Neither would be pleasant on a bike - electric or not.

And I think that’s the point of this discussion: engineering for averages is a terrible idea, and most EVs don’t work for most journey profiles for most of the World’s drivers today, compared to ICE

cguess  4 years ago

Battery degradation would limit expectations. "Oh shit, I got one of those old batteries that will only get me 150 miles when I was hoping for 200 to get to my mother-in-law's for Thanksgiving" isn't going to work.

  • ljosifov  4 years ago

    Then you are going to drive 150 miles and spend extra 3 mins to change the battery again - no? Not a big deal, and certainly not a deal breaker. Nah - the pit-stop type battery replacement is the obvious solution to most EV charging problems, but we humans can not execute it. It requires level of coordination and cooperation between companies that we are not easily capable of right now.

    • bluGill  4 years ago

      Battery replacement works only if you make compromises. EVs are currently designed to put batteries where they fit, a standard battery means much less batteries and thus much less range. Second cars come in different sizes, a swappable battery needs to fit in the smallest car, leaving larger cars with a much to small battery.

      Sure it can work, but overall I have to call it a bad compromise.

  • lillecarl  4 years ago

    Could be solved by measuring how much charge it takes and bills you for that + some min charge for the change service would be the price, a bit more complex but I reckon the swap service could be made simple enough that it's low cost.

spoonjim  4 years ago

I don’t think this will ever happen. You will need to inventory $30,000 parts to sell them for $30,005 (if $5 is the cost of the charge). And the cars will have to have tons of design compromises.