The problem with swap stations, in addition to the large infrastructure cost, is that you need to keep your vehicles and battery packs compatible for years to come. If you have 4 different car models, you either need all 4 vehicles to use the same battery pack format, or you need to have multiple battery packs available. It might seem trivial, but it's a significant design constraint.
IMO if technology progresses and we can get rapid charging times close to 10 minutes or less, battery swapping technology will become entirely moot.
My prediction is that NIO will have to sink a lot of cost into this technology to build all the swapping stations and have all the spare packs available, and that will likely be its downfall. If you think I'm being silly, then please consider that NIO is the same company that invested in having yoga lessons at its dealerships[0], which seems like WeWorks-level stupidity to me. This company does not know how to deploy capital in a lean and effective manner IMO.
I could see it for a semi truck. Another advantage there is that you don't need it to look pretty, you don't need to try to hide the battery under the truck.
Part of our org operates a couple of box trucks for equipment delivery and other stuff - this type of thing would be a boon to us, I’d assume the an electric truck would be like an electric car with reduced maintenance, etc.
Being able to keep these things rolling and deal with battery warranty claims without downing a truck would be a real cost saver - when trucks break down it’s really expensive to either reschedule or lease short term.
Can they really load so fast as to bottleneck on the current 30 minute charge times (Tesla Semi, 70% fast charge)?
A swap station would need maintenance and refilling, so it's starting from behind and has to earn back its keep by eliminating latency that absolutely can't be hidden any other way.
I suppose it would feel like a dream when it actually works. I'd imagine it a lot like a car wash experience. The only thing that worries me is how the batteries are handled. Freighters are the worst and ding up everything. Imagine shipping 100s of batteries around the country? Sounds like a nightmare if they're not using specialized trucks or packing material.
Why not let cars use model or brand specific battery storage solutions for, say, 80% of their power and a swappable reasonably sized standard form factor modular battery for the last 15-20%, just for critical drive-home, or at least drive-to-the-next-swap-station storage?
It seems like something the size of a briefcase ought to be suitable for just about any format of electric vehicle aside from motorcycles, which likely would have less need for this facility anyway due to quick charging.
Might as well just charge though? Even without DC fast charging, adding 15-20% charge onto an EV won't take very long, and it's a lot easier and less capital intensive to maintain a charging station than a battery swap station.
For that matter, any outlet in the entire world can already function as a charger for last-minute emergencies, which is a density that dedicated infrastructure could never hope to match.
That's far but what happens when these start popping up next to Tesla chargers and you're waiting in line while people I breezing through NIO stations? It's a pipe dream atm but I believe it will spark something in Tesla owners.
I dunno, putting exclusive clubs at chargers sounds like a good way to build premium brand image. China is big. Building a cult in China sounds like good business. Until the CCP steps on you, I suppose?
The problem with swapping is the battery is a very large portion of the residual value of the car. While functionally very different it'd be more like swapping out the engine or transmission in an ICE car. You don't want to roll in with 20k miles on the odometer and roll out with 250k miles!
This is actually the same issue with using EV batteries for grid tied storage. You end up putting (many) more cycles on the battery which devalues your car.
Exactly. You can do things like swap out a small battery for a large one when you need one. Or an empty one for a full one if you are in a hurry. The whole process only takes a few minutes.
Not lugging around hundreds of kilos of batteries you don't need makes the car more efficient. Just swap in a big one when you need one. And you don't have to worry about battery life either as long as the battery is within specs, you are good to go. And if it isn't you just replace it and get another one.
Makes the car cheaper to buy but probably more expensive to use. And NIO gets to re-purpose the older batteries for things like grid storage without having to wait a few years for the cars to come back.
You don't really want a small battery, even if you don't need the full capacity.
Batteries degrade the most near their limits, so a large battery that you use a small part of most of the time will live far longer than if you had a battery with just the capacity you need.
The optimal strategy is having configurable charge levels. Eg, Dell laptops allow you to tell it to only use 80% of the battery to preserve battery life when you don't need the full capacity. Then before going on a trip you change the setting and charge it fully.
If you drive around in a city. You have no need for a big battery. It's dead weight and you pay for it in the form of more electricity cost. If you don't own but lease the battery and can swap it at will at one of NIO's swapping stations, you just do that before a long journey. Battery longevity is a concern for NIO, not for you.
BTW. EVs are not like phones and laptops. Modern ones have batteries that likely outlive the vehicle. A full charging cycle is good for 200-300 miles. 3000 cycles times 300 is 900000 miles. Mostly other things in the car will break before you reach that point. Depending on the battery type, you get at least 1000-1500 cycles and more in some cases. Even a modest 450000 miles is pretty decent for cars. Most ICE vehicles go to scrap yard long before that.
> If you drive around in a city. You have no need for a big battery. It's dead weight and you pay for it in the form of more electricity cost. If you don't own but lease the battery and can swap it at will at one of NIO's swapping stations, you just do that before a long journey. Battery longevity is a concern for NIO, not for you.
There's no free lunch. You're paying for that battery, either upfront, or through the rental. NIO therefore will choose whatever maximizes battery longevity, not whatever you think is best. If you're renting and don't own it, your ideas on battery weight are not relevant.
The most likely choice for NIO to make is what Tesla does: give everyone a big battery, then charge them extra (and probably a lot) to unlock its full capacity.
Li-Ion risks fatal damage if discharged too deeply. Especially if it's going to be rented, a safety measure against that would be making the car refuse to ever dip below say 20%, as well as refusing to charge above 80% or so.
Then, for a special payment, or temporarily as a courtesy if emergency situations (eg, incoming tornado), you can have the full capacity unlocked.
> Modern ones have batteries that likely outlive the vehicle.
So long they're well cared for, yes. But if you don't own the battery, you might not care to take precautions. Hence, the owner will likely try to ensure by all means possible you can't kill it even if you try.
Wife and I were just talking about the idea a few days ago.
Swapping the entire big battery of a car seems like a big ask, and opens up issues of "swapping a brand new battery to an highly used one" etc. What I would rather like is an extendable range in EVs. Sell me a 100KM range car that I will use as-is most of the year. When I go on trips, I'd like to be able to stop the car somewhere, toss it a couple of battery modules (like filling up gas), and that should equip me to drive until next such stop in two or three hours. At the end of my trip, I could simply return the battery modules for a refund of deposit.
I think it would be easier to simply get EVs to the point where they have over 300mi of range on a charge and build out quick charge infrastructure. Waiting 20-30 minutes to quick charge after close to 300 miles of driving doesn't really seem that big of a headache to me. That's basically equivalent to stopping for food, gas, and a bathroom break which I'd do on long trips anyways.
That's nice for you that your 20 minute poop breaks are enough time to charge your car.
On the other hand, every time I have traveled by car between the bay area and LA (~400 miles, 5-6 hours one way) , I/we never* made any stops longer than 10 minutes.
*I say never, but there have actually been a couple times when I set out not well rested and on the return leg I needed to stop in the middle somewhere to catch some shut eye. But the vast majority of trips are on the road the entire time except one stop for 5 minutes to fill gas and empty bladder.
I'd love to find a good number on the daily mileage of the median passenger car in the US. The average looks to be around 30-35mi/day but the median is probably a small fraction of that. Why would you want your battery pack to be 10x oversized for your typical day?
I think a more efficient solution would be series-hybrids with small onboard generators for range extension. Minimize weight/cost of the battery pack while maintaining the ability to drive cross-country without frequent charging stops.
PHEVs are certainly more complex, but a series hybrid like the BMW i3 only involves finding space for a small genset and some additional control software/electronics. I'm having trouble finding good numbers but this[0] article says the option added only ~$4k to the price.
One of the economies of battery scale is durability, no? What you gain in cost savings up front you lose by needing to replace the batteries more frequently than N times the larger battery pack size.
That's pretty much how road trips in a Tesla play out today. After depleting the battery you want to get out and stretch your legs, use the bathroom, and get a snack.
Most fast chargers are located near or at amenities. This is how it should be. I could see rest stops on the highway being outfitted with fast chargers in the future.
The charge stations just need a bathroom and maybe some vending machines and a waiting area. Fancier ones can be more like the big road trip gas stations you sometimes run into
Some form of this thought is irresistible, but we shouldn't hesitate to point out the obvious flaws. You load up your car with more people and more stuff when you go on a trip, and more batteries would add MORE load on the frame. This doesn't work. Ideally, you would add another axle.
Suspend disbelief and follow that thought to its logical conclusion.
You have almost certainly PLANNED your trip. You know what time you will depart, and the trip may take 4 to 10 hours, done in a single day. Additionally, you will spend 30 minutes packing your car, and more space is a premium. Keep following me, just a little bit longer..
The day before you depart at, say 3pm, a worker from an established car rental service pulls up in front of your house and parks on your street. They unhitch a trailer from their car, do some technical checks, and are gone in 5 minutes.
You arrive home from work, and have a trailer that will add 400 miles of range to your car and offer extra packing space (for things). You pack up the trailer & car and go to bed. In the morning, as you pull out, you get out and hook up the trailer.
Depending on your trip, you may charge up the car & trailer once, or not at all. I'm guessing that it will be able to connect two chargers at once.
This seems like not-a-bad-idea, and compatible with current infrastructure. While it incurs a cost, and requires EVs to be built for the purpose, it's a much more minor change than battery swapping. The cost could be quite small compared to the other solutions for the same problem, and it frankly sounds more direct.
- charging allows for parallel charging while a swap station would allow for 1 vehicle to be swapped, so you could have a line of cars waiting to swap that would take just long or longer than charging
- swap stations need full size battery packs that could otherwise be used to sell another BEV
- battery degradation would upset folks who had a battery with 100% range only to be swapped for a used battery with 80% range
- unless they carry different form factor battery packs, they are limiting their vehicles to same size packs basically forever, so forget about larger packs or smaller packs depending on vehicle size
What I think is of particular concern is perverse incentives, and a race to the bottom.
* Somebody with a pristine battery takes a risk by swapping. They probably won't, because they're extremely likely to get a worse one than they arrived with.
* Somebody ruins their battery in some way. A battery swap lets them with a high likelihood get something better. They'll probably do that.
* People doing a swap have a risk with getting something worse, and getting stuck somewhere. Every time that happens the reputation of the swap stations gets worse.
* All the above results in the quality of batteries being available at the station going down and down, until the entire system collapses.
What are the possible counter-measures? You could have user registration and punish people with a fine if they drop in a broken battery, but the batteries are expensive, so the fine would be large. That'd be a risky proposal.
You’re not getting a worse battery than one you owned, because you don’t own it, you just swap again when you need to. Batteries that get too old get retired by the swap stations.
I'm fascinated by your responses, I genuinely am. And you're not the only one responding in this way. But it's so alien to me.
Here's a way to try to work around things like range limitations in EVs and long charging times, by setting up infrastructure to swap batteries in and out, and your first thought is about maintaining the value of your vehicle, not the utility of the system.
> So who owns it?
Presumably they are all leased from the vehicle company. Think "Battery as a service", not "This is mine".
> What happens when you cross countries or state borders?
I don't know, this seems an odd detail to fixate on though.
> And if people don't own it, why would they take good care of it?
Presumably these are going to be relatively robust, and there will be some sort of conditions of good conduct on participating in the scheme, or part of the lease payment constitutes insurance against maltreatment. And does that particularly matter to you? The swap-stations make sure batteries are in good order before swapping them into your car.
> Here's a way to try to work around things like range limitations in EVs and long charging times, by setting up infrastructure to swap batteries in and out
I think it's for the most part a non-problem. Most EV users don't wait to charge. They charge at idle times and start the day with a fully charged car. The need to charge quickly is far rarer for an EV user than going to the gas station for a gas/diesel user.
> and your first thought is about maintaining the value of your vehicle, not the utility of the system.
No, my concern is how is the system going to maintain its own utility without crashing and burning economically. Because a battery is an expensive component and ultimately has to be paid for somehow, there's no ignoring that.
> Presumably they are all leased from the vehicle company. Think "Battery as a service", not "This is mine".
The problem I see is that a battery isn't a car. With a car you can walk around it and say "you've clearly crashed into something here, we'll send you the bill for the repairs". A battery is a much more obscure component that's easier to abuse and harder to determine it's been abused.
Worse, it's a component that can suffer grievous damage by complete accident -- leave it discharged in the sun for a day or two and that'll probably hurt quite a bit.
> I don't know, this seems an odd detail to fixate on though.
How so? A car is for moving people around. People sometimes want to go far. So what happens when you take stuff you don't own into a country where that company doesn't exist? Is the company going to fine you for charging it with an unauthorized charger?
Is the utility compromised because a good part of the value was the battery swap proposition and you can't do that anymore outside of wherever this particular company has hardware?
> And does that particularly matter to you?
It matters for the survival of the system. If I don't own the battery, it's not my problem that it breaks. Therefore I have less incentive to take care of it. But the battery in the end must be paid for, so either the swap company eats the loss and goes bankrupt, or fines customers until getting a terrible PR and goes bankrupt from lack of customers.
In the case of VinFast, they own it. You can't even buy the car itself, it is a lease from the start. You'd be correct in the economics not making any sense and of course people are ripping on that in their forums. Hopefully, they figure it out eventually. Luckily for VinFast, the entire Vietnamese government is backing them.
What you're imagining though is that you own the battery. In the case of NIO, it is a lease the entire time. When you sell the car, you're selling the lease on the battery with it.
The station could test the battery and charge you/give you a credit depending on the capacity difference. Every battery would have an audit trail as well
The first point barely makes sense if you can have more than one bay. Also it's about how many can you swap in an hour vs charge? The base expectation is you'll be able to do way more cars since they don't have to sit and wait for an hour just like gasoline cards today.
Battery degrading is only an issue if I own the battery instead of getting it like a subscription. A 10% swing in range shouldn't matter in most scenarios as long as I only pay for the energy used.
All these problems here are solvable. I think there are way bigger issues for the company like now they need to own a bunch of batteries and house those on the books.
So I think a part that is forgotten about with battery swap station is that those batteries still need to be charged. Which gets into how many additional batteries does each station need stored to be able to keep up with demand. If it takes 1 hour to fully charge a battery and you want to be able to serve a car every 5 minutes then you are going to need to be able to send out 12 batteries within an hour. So now as a consumer you are going to pay for the electricity to charge those batteries, 12 charging stations, plus the overhead of 12 batteries sitting doing nothing but charging.
Companies could reduce that overhead cost by reducing charging times, but as charging times reduce it becomes more likely the consumer will choose to simply just choose to charge their own vehicle instead of swapping a battery. How much are consumers going to be willing to spend to save 5-10 minutes? I drive past Sam's Club every day after work where people wait in line easily 10-20 minutes to save 5-10 cents per gallon of gas.
This is what I'm referring to as "housing on the books" you've got this insane infrastructure that goes beyond simply charging.
I also agree, how much time are people willing to spend to save money and the answer is, a lot. Grows quite rapidly lower on the economic ladder you go.
To be fair, it's not saving 5-10 minutes. A Tesla supercharger still takes ~15m for only 200mi. To go to full charge, you'd be saving an 30-45m easy. If all the bays are full, 2-3 hours?!
But to agree with you, if you put the battery swap next to a charging station and charged less for the charging station (because less infra), how many people would be willing to simply take the lower cost and wait a bunch of time? Quite a lot I'm afraid.
So the car I am most interested in is the Ioniq 5 which is rated at a 10-80% charge time of 18 minutes. Sure it is not a completely full battery but largely that isn't necessary. But I think the major issue is that technology advancement necessary to reduce overhead costs for battery swap stations will only make charging more appealing, because the only way to reduce the number of batteries required in stock is to be able to charge them faster. So even though right now it might save you 30-45 minutes right now for a full battery, it would cost significantly more. As charging times decrease it will start saving less and less time but still will cost a premium.
> Notably, NIO also equipped two LiDARs and two Nvidia Orin chips on the third-generation battery swap station, for a total computing power of 508 TOPS.
Does anyone know the context of this? Seemed somewhat out of place, why would a battery swap station have particularly high computing power and what does Lidar have to do with it?
I'm wondering if a solution to the "I don't want a subpar battery swapped into my vehicle" problem is simply to not own the battery? What if I could be sold a car and then just lease the battery as a service? Then I just visit a swap station and don't care about the battery I receive.
People swap propane tanks for their grills all the time.
Compatibility isn't really that much of problem, because you know, you designed for it. It's not like they're going to be all "oh shit, the compartment only fits AAA batteries and we accidentally made it into a 9V form factor."
If you've gone to a battery store lately (batteries plus), you can see that keeping track of battery inventory isn't really a hard problem.
When I first heard about NIO's battery thing it sounded pretty interesting. Ideally you'd go in, get a cup of coffee, and you'd be done - in about the time it takes to fill your gas tank. You don't have to build out an electric charging infrastructure, and you can centrally charge your batteries at whatever speed you feel like. You don't have problems with recycling, and you can also directly monitor for battery issues.
And since it's a service center you can keep an eye on the cars and what's happening with them.
In any case, our opinions don't matter because they're doing it and have been relatively successful at it.
I think the idea is good, and the economics don't immediately suggest that is impractical more than, say, the supply chain dynamics behind widespread gas stations to me. The issue is getting there, and while China has these manufacturers pushing the swap paradigm, we'll almost need someone with Tesla level deep pockets to get over the implementation hump in the US.
The comments here are just wild. Battery swapping stations have been operational in multiple Asian countries for years. But somehow the HN commentariat is convinced that it's impossible.
Taiwan has battery swapping stations for their...GoRo? Electric scooters, but they are the size of a coffee can and user-swapped using the integrated handle. Battery swap on a car-sized battery is going to be... Several magnitudes of order more complex. Dropping and denting a lithium battery with the wrong chemistry could have substantial consequences.
Battery swapping seems crazy. Batteries have a wide range of values depending on performance, age, charge cycles etc. Why would I want to swap out my brand new very expensive battery for some old crusty piece of crap?
Plus, they're presumably very heavy. How easy is it for the elderly / infirm to manage?
The batteries are leased in this case, so aside from any other issues, that won't really be a problem.
They're heavy, which is why a mechanism changes the battery. No human could swap an EV battery without mechanical assistance - they're all in the 400Kg + territory! You drive up to the station, and the machine does it for you.
A potential solution would be to provide "batteries as a service" when a car is bought. You'd not be paying for a battery per se but rather for the battery service with some performance guarantees where you pay a base monthly and mileage fee -or something to that effect.
Battery swap appears to make sense for scooters. Taiwan moves on scooters, and Gogoro is the e-scooter leader in Taiwan. So there is a success story for battery swapping. But it took many years for Gogoro to build up a swapping "vending machine" network and for customers to gain confidence in battery swapping.
OTOH almost everything - cost of batteries, no heavy lifting, unattended swap stations, etc. - is easier for scooters.
How many people here know swap stations are a mainstream normal thing for mopeds in some Chinese cities? How many people here know that in some Chinese cities there are no gas mopeds?
We've all seen the videos, but likewise we all know that EV batteries are on a whole different scale regarding size, weight, cost, and power. It's not at all clear what translates and what can be made to translate.
The only real answer is to have multiple players place their bets and see what works.
I agree moped scale does not scale to cars, but it's so practical, and does or could have a place. I really think most people don't have a place in their head for e-bikes. It would scale up a little more. I have not seen normal mainstream videos of people swapping moped batteries. How do I search for such videos? I only see clearly advertising/prototypes on YouTube. I was shocked when I saw this in person. I am just going off of what I saw around the Pearl River Delta (China) cities. I will say this will not work in my area (Too cold/suburbs) It would be totally awesome on bike paths, but think this is pipe dream. It's kind of like saying they should allow jet skis in the smaller park lakes. Never going to happen.
IMO if technology progresses and we can get rapid charging times close to 10 minutes or less, battery swapping technology will become entirely moot.
My prediction is that NIO will have to sink a lot of cost into this technology to build all the swapping stations and have all the spare packs available, and that will likely be its downfall. If you think I'm being silly, then please consider that NIO is the same company that invested in having yoga lessons at its dealerships[0], which seems like WeWorks-level stupidity to me. This company does not know how to deploy capital in a lean and effective manner IMO.
[0] https://cnevpost.com/2022/12/17/nio-opens-first-nio-house-in...