Very cool solution to long charge times.

[E90alex]

Sounds great in theory but lots of problems in practice.

Each station would need up to dozens of batteries to support enough turnover while charging the batteries before they are ready to be swapped. That’s a massive waste of precious battery mineral resources which are still at a premium.

Not to mention the cost of actually building and maintaining the swap station in the first place. Buying, building and maintaining property is a far far much greater expense for a company than just installing chargers in a parking lot that someone else owns.

All of this is even without mentioning that batteries are all proprietary. Between different brands and even between models of the same brand. Sure you could make the batteries universal but then they would not be optimized for each vehicle.

Therefore it would be highly impractical and inefficient to have a half a dozen different swap stations for every different car brand, each carrying dozens of EV batteries sitting idle, and located every couple hundred miles or less on order to support long distance travel.

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[Ark29]

You don’t need battery swapping if your charging curve looks like the attachment.
I hope Ford will bring the new generation of Mach E with 800V architecture otherwise it is hard to survive especially in Europe.
Sadly, I will have to look for other options.

 

[JamieGeek]

That's not shocking. was ANYONE driving electric cars in 2012??

I was. (well ok 2013--close enough)

 

[music_cities]

The notion of having energy stored in batteries at charging stations waiting to be injected into cars has merit, but there's no reason to spend all that effort moving atoms from the station to the car when you you can just transfer the energy directly instead while going pee and ordering a coffee.

I'm a fan of battery-backed charging stations as they allow more throughput at peak periods, lower demand charges, and more use of renewable energy. But if a battery-backed charging stations runs out of charge in its batteries, it can still charge cars, just more slowly. Whereas if a battery-swap station runs out of batteries it's basically hooped.

Plus in modern EVs the batteries are integral to the structure of the car, if the batteries have to be packaged in such a way that they can be swapped in and out, the car is heavier and/or the battery capacity is less.

Hey, who still has a cellphone with a swappable battery? Those were fun!

 

[NY_Cade69]

Hey, who still has a cellphone with a swappable battery? Those were fun!

Had a Startac, different batteries, slim for style, chunky for time. And had a full 3 watt GSM car kit...

 

[ex2bot]

No. This made sense when batteries took 30-40 mins to charge. The infrastructure required to do battery swaps (extra battery packs, swap stations, staff) is just silly when 10-80% takes 5 minutes and 10-97% takes 9 mins.

https://insideevs.com/news/792274/lynk-co-10-charging-test/

The real question is, when are American companies like Ford, GM, Tesla, and Rivian, going to get serious about charging times for their EVs?

Silverelan’s opinion is correct. The BYD megawatt charger (1.5 MW) just installed in Western Europe somewhere don’t remember uses a big battery PLUS grid power to charge at those speeds.

 

[devmach-e]

That's not shocking. was ANYONE driving electric cars in 2012??

Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S were out and widely available.

 

[Billyk24]

Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S were out and widely available.

Model S widely available? Not quite. Without a Supercharging network those living in the fly over parts of the country did not have a Tesla.

 

[NY_Cade69]

Model S widely available? Not quite. Without a Supercharging network those living in the fly over parts of the country did not have a Tesla.

Never realized that the mid-west still did not have electricity in their homes.

 

[devmach-e]

Model S widely available? Not quite. Without a Supercharging network those living in the fly over parts of the country did not have a Tesla.

Why would the presence of Superchargers dictate where Teslas would be sold? Sure, they make long distance traveling viable, but they aren’t necessary for everyday use. And they certainly aren’t necessary for delivery to a customer.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Model S widely available? Not quite. Without a Supercharging network those living in the fly over parts of the country did not have a Tesla.

Model S sales had production capacity restraints through 2018 or so. It was introduced mid year 2012.

The fact that flyover country didn't see fit to buy Teslas doesn’t mean it wasn’t widely available. If you're arguing that cars needs to be sold nearby you to be considered widely available then here’s the list of cars not widely available based on here:

Acura
Audi
Cadillac
Fiat
GMC
Infinity
Jaguar
Lexus
Lincoln
Lucid
Mercedes
Polestar
Porsche
Rivian
Tesla
VW

And a bunch of others.

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