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.
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.