Scooters. The thing is, a lot of asia is scooter centric. Taipei, Manila, HCM, Jakarta, KL.. they'd be there. I've been to those cities and the first 40+ vehicles at any junction are scooters, everywhere. But translating battery swap to cars is harder.
It shouldn't have been harder, I blame Musk who wanted market advantages of not doing it.
There's a lot of bad economics expressed in batteries as if "Gresham's law" would lead to people hoarding good ones. That just doesn't apply: batteries are not money, they have a specific use value and bad batteries will be taken out of the supply chain.
The physical infrastructure required to do this at any scale makes it prohibitively expensive. I've rarely spent more than 15 minutes at a fast charger. Modern BEVs have a pretty impressive charging curve, and with the extensive charging network that is available, at least in Norway, you can optimize this further. I think there's a good analogy to IP over Avian Carriers. You can technically get super high bandwidth, but the latency kills you. Latency in this case being the physical battery swap stations.
Having swappable batteries on the other hand, that might have some benefit. I don't really need a 82kWh battery pack in my car for my every day needs. It just adds a lot of weight. I also think this is what Nio is aiming for. I doubt they see battery swapping as a solution to fast charging, more to let customers have some flexibility in terms of battery capacity, and to make people still nervous about battery longevity calm down a little.
That's still just a drop in the ocean. Tesla alone has more than a thousand 150-250kW+ charging stalls in Norway alone, in over 100 locations. If you combine all other providers we're looking at more than 5000 stalls, providing 150-350kW.
Nio is also deploying fast chargers alongside their battery swap stations, which leads me to believe that they also see the limitations with swap stations.
My initial comment was to someone who believes that battery swapping will win out in the end, which I'm fairly certain it won't, just given how good fast charging technology is now.
Reportedly Nio is burning cash at an unprecedented rate. I would assume the complexity of making the battery removable is digging into their margins quite heavily, as well as building out this infrastructure that very few actually needs. I see it mostly as a gimmick to get people who are hellbent on thinking that battery technology will either massively increase all of a sudden or those that think batteries degrade much faster and more than they actually do.
40% of EV cost is in the battery. I can see how battery swap service can be more efficient and more economical than replacing the entire car battery when needed.
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[ 6.6 ms ] story [ 47.1 ms ] threadIt shouldn't have been harder, I blame Musk who wanted market advantages of not doing it.
There's a lot of bad economics expressed in batteries as if "Gresham's law" would lead to people hoarding good ones. That just doesn't apply: batteries are not money, they have a specific use value and bad batteries will be taken out of the supply chain.
Nio's doing it. Takes about six minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0
The physical infrastructure required to do this at any scale makes it prohibitively expensive. I've rarely spent more than 15 minutes at a fast charger. Modern BEVs have a pretty impressive charging curve, and with the extensive charging network that is available, at least in Norway, you can optimize this further. I think there's a good analogy to IP over Avian Carriers. You can technically get super high bandwidth, but the latency kills you. Latency in this case being the physical battery swap stations.
Having swappable batteries on the other hand, that might have some benefit. I don't really need a 82kWh battery pack in my car for my every day needs. It just adds a lot of weight. I also think this is what Nio is aiming for. I doubt they see battery swapping as a solution to fast charging, more to let customers have some flexibility in terms of battery capacity, and to make people still nervous about battery longevity calm down a little.
Nio's deploying another 1,000 swap stations this year:
https://cnevpost.com/2023/02/21/nio-plans-to-add-1000-swap-s...
Nio is also deploying fast chargers alongside their battery swap stations, which leads me to believe that they also see the limitations with swap stations.
Why would you think it's exclusively one or the other?
It's never been exclusively swapping or charging. It's always been both swapping and charging. Nio's cars do both.
Remember your claim was "the physical infrastructure required to do this at any scale makes it prohibitively expensive". That's plainly false.
> Tesla alone has more than a thousand 150-250kW+ charging stalls in Norway alone
Yes? And? So? What? Nios can charge at those Tesla charging stalls.
Reportedly Nio is burning cash at an unprecedented rate. I would assume the complexity of making the battery removable is digging into their margins quite heavily, as well as building out this infrastructure that very few actually needs. I see it mostly as a gimmick to get people who are hellbent on thinking that battery technology will either massively increase all of a sudden or those that think batteries degrade much faster and more than they actually do.