new battery can give 300 mi range in just 5 min

[PandaBear]

Every attempt at EV battery swap has failed without massive government subsidies.

How much rent must one charge on a $10,000 item? Too much say consumers who could simply plug in at home at night for 1/20th the cost/mile.

You don't rent an extra $10k item. You buy a car that cost $10k less and then rent a $3k battery regularly, and only rent a $10k battery when you need for the long trip.

Batteries are very expensive; you would need perhaps 3 batteries for each car. And probably many more. Cars sit a lot.
Battery swap would involve standardization, which ain't gonna happen.
Batteries would end up in large quantities in wrong places at the wrong time; the co-ordination would be a nightmare.

Tesla, and some others, use a structural battery.
Charging is a better solution. Come home and plugs in. Nuthin' too it.

The structural battery benefit is real, but other than that I think we already have the solution: If you break your swappable part of the battery into N pieces and drain one at a time, you can swap out 1/N of it at a time, and just charge that 1/N part.

The problem with batteries being at the wrong place at the wrong time is a problem with all sort of fundamental infrastructure problems: you either have chargers at the wrong place at the wrong time, people driving through the wrong place at the wrong time, gasoline inventories at the wrong place at the wrong time, etc. One could argue that if you have a huge line and people can't charge their EV fast enough, pulling them out of the car and charging them offline can face the same problem (because the charger electronics is the same). You probably cannot get around peak travel season (Thanksgiving in the US) EV road trip infrastructure issue regardless of swap vs fast charging if they are electricity and electronics limited, without extra batteries or extra cars that drivers can hop into and move.

The benefit of battery swap IMO is actually 1) you can make people feel comfortable using older, reduced range, more worn out batteries most of the time, so we need fewer batteries in the society, or we can use the older large batteries longer. 2) There will be a lot of batteries sitting around ready to absorb surplus grid generation at a low price, even if that overlap with commute hours. 3) Reduce the risk an individual owner have to face if the vehicle is having battery problems. You don't need to worry about what Nissan Leaf owners are facing, and you don't need to dump a perfectly good car if it needs a $10k battery.

Yes, we need standardization to swap, but that is not a bad thing like you make it sound like. Having standard means it is cheaper to make, lower risk to buy and sell and rent, creating things that you can use them for outside of automotive, etc. Internet is really just a standardized computer network that has been around anyways, and look at what standardization do for the world!

 

[Rand]

BMW i3 REx tried just that. Failed.

Poor attempt.
expensive(43k base?) ugly, 100hp, 100mile range.
because of regulations the gas tank was limited to 1.9gallons- later 2.4gallons.. so it could be classified as an EV.

The most un-BMW BMW ever made.

At $20-25000 with less whacks from the ugly stick and a 6-8gal gas tank it would have been more popular

 

[JeffKeryk]

You don't rent an extra $10k item. You buy a car that cost $10k less and then rent a $3k battery regularly, and only rent a $10k battery when you need for the long trip.

• How long does it take to swap a battery? You can get a good charge in 15 minutes.
• How many of the battery swap stations would be needed? Who is gonna build them? Where?
• Standardization ain't gonna happen.

Batteries are too big, too expensive, too hard to swap and logistics would be a nightmare.
You say the car costs less; who is gonna pay for the batteries? Poor buisiness plan...

Just plug in and go makes far more sense.

 

[PandaBear]

BMW i3 REx tried just that. Failed.

To be fair, i3 was a horrible car that BMW just throw out quickly. The interior is like a compostable lunch box, the rear seats sunk inward and make rear facing car seats impossible to use (nobody with infant or toddler would buy it, eliminating a huge market), the car is ugly, the tire is weird, the range extender is bad in efficiency, BMW is expensive, etc. It is a worse car than a Prius with a BMW badge on it.

 

[PandaBear]

Gee, I didn't know China was installing megawatt chargers in households now. Learn something new every day!

Guess Tesla was lying about the V3 Supercharger at which I spent being 250kW. Or the times I saw 118kW indicated as incoming on V2 Superchargers.

Most people live in apartment buildings and I'm sure if you have a high rise, having fewer megawatt chargers is better than more smaller chargers.

1MW sounds like a lot, but when you split it among chargers it is like your gigabit cable internet: your whole street shares it, you can't use it all the time, so it is probably useful for road trip fast charging only anyways.

 

[PandaBear]

• How long does it take to swap a battery? You can get a good charge in 15 minutes.
• How many of the battery swap stations would be needed? Who is gonna build them? Where?
• Standardization ain't gonna happen.

Batteries are too big, too expensive, too hard to swap and logistics would be a nightmare.
You say the car costs less; who is gonna pay for the batteries? Poor buisiness plan...

Just plug in and go makes far more sense.

Based on what I see, yes standardization has to happen or we need an industrial leader to pay for the station and rent the batteries out to customers. I think Nio was doing that, maybe in cherry picked market like Shanghai, where parking spot cost more than the electricity to charge. I am sure they were subsidized when I read the article but that's just like most EV manufacturers back then as well. Maybe fleet would afford its own station like PDs have their own gas pump.

Also can happen would be investment bank owning batteries, and package them like mortgages and car loans and sell them as investment to retirement funds.

 

[oil pan 4]

BYD, just announced a new battery that can give you 300 mi of range in just 5 min of charging But it needs a 1000 kw charger and who knows what else

It will need its own substation.

 

[GrumpyCat]

You don't rent an extra $10k item. You buy a car that cost $10k less and then rent a $3k battery regularly, and only rent a $10k battery when you need for the long trip.

Brilliant! Why has no one done this before?

Because it is a stupid idea. Batteries wear based on the percentage of discharge. When operated near the extremes the battery wears much faster than when kept in the middle. Put a small battery in the vehicle and it will be operated near the extremes. It will last fewer than 1/3rd the miles of a battery 3x it's capacity.

And then lets say the full size battery is 1000 pounds. The 30% battery is 300 pounds. How do you rebalance the vehicle for the missing (or added) 700 pounds?

A $6000 Bad Boy 54" lawn mower rents for $170/day. How much will you have to charge in rent for a $3000 battery? A $10,000 battery?

 

[GrumpyCat]

Poor attempt.
expensive(43k base?) ugly, 100hp, 100mile range.
because of regulations the gas tank was limited to 1.9gallons- later 2.4gallons.. so it could be classified as an EV.

No. BMW thought they could squeak it under CARB rules if the gas tank range was less than 50% of the battery range, therefore claiming it to be primarily propelled by battery. That argument was rejected, the REx did not qualify as an EV, but as a PHEV.

The most un-BMW BMW ever made.

Either the most un-BMW or the most BMW.

It dripped of German Engineering: "How can we make this complex and wonderful rather than simple and sweet?"

At $20-25000 with less whacks from the ugly stick and a 6-8gal gas tank it would have been more popular

Excellent! Why don't you just go out and design and built such a vehicle?

 

[GrumpyCat]

Most people live in apartment buildings and I'm sure if you have a high rise, having fewer megawatt chargers is better than more smaller chargers.

You are right, we should take electric stoves and ovens away, and clothes dryers, in favor of centralized restaurants and laundry mats. We can't have these arbitrary 10kW loads appearing willy-nilly on The Precious Delicate Grid. Rather, we need megawatt loads switching on and off!

No, (100) 10kW connections (they are not chargers) is infinitely better than one centralized megawatt charger. And less than 1/25th of the cost.

Apartment listings around here include a checkbox as to whether EV charging is available. Craigslist has a checkbox under housing search.

1MW sounds like a lot, but when you split it among chargers it is like your gigabit cable internet: your whole street shares it, you can't use it all the time, so it is probably useful for road trip fast charging only anyways.

So now you want to put multiple megawatt chargers on the same branch, which means only one at a time can be used. You really are determined to force The Gas Station Model on EV users. Which simply proves you have absolutely no experience with EVs, that you are an Internet Intellectual Who Has Thought Upon Things And Now Knows The One True Way.

 

[GrumpyCat]

Based on what I see, yes standardization has to happen or we need an industrial leader to pay for the station and rent the batteries out to customers. I think Nio was doing that, maybe in cherry picked market like Shanghai, where parking spot cost more than the electricity to charge. I am sure they were subsidized when I read the article but that's just like most EV manufacturers back then as well. Maybe fleet would afford its own station like PDs have their own gas pump.

Also can happen would be investment bank owning batteries, and package them like mortgages and car loans and sell them as investment to retirement funds.

Are you lining up to bet your retirement on this? You seem to deeply believe in it.

Has failed every time it has been tried. No investor would allow the battery to be rented at a rate less than it's wear and tear, and risk of loss. When tallied up the only "investor" willing to bet on caring for the battery's good health is the EV owner.

 

[alarmguy]

We will never be swapping batteries. Way too expensive to build out. Might as well toss the whole lithium EV thing in the waste basket in that case.

China has solved the issue already and more solutions will come our way. But we arent going to be swapping batteries in 300 million vehicles.

 

[PandaBear]

Brilliant! Why has no one done this before?

Because it is a stupid idea. Batteries wear based on the percentage of discharge. When operated near the extremes the battery wears much faster than when kept in the middle. Put a small battery in the vehicle and it will be operated near the extremes. It will last fewer than 1/3rd the miles of a battery 3x it's capacity.

And then lets say the full size battery is 1000 pounds. The 30% battery is 300 pounds. How do you rebalance the vehicle for the missing (or added) 700 pounds?

A $6000 Bad Boy 54" lawn mower rents for $170/day. How much will you have to charge in rent for a $3000 battery? A $10,000 battery?

First off, based on most EV batteries depreciation today, they wear out mostly on years rather than miles. This is similar to hybrid batteries as well. Sure you will have the lab theory but the actual usage tends to follow more of people replacing batteries at certain years vs certain miles.

Next, assuming you standardized the batteries so that your car can swap in newer or older batteries. You can say you build a smaller battery for some people and larger battery for others, and people "rent" accordingly. You can say the same about people driving an EV 100 miles a day on a 150 mile range EV vs a 300 mile range EV. Is it a cheaper way to commute if he buy a 150 mile range EV and replace the battery as it age assuming that most are designed for 15 years, vs if he buy a 300 mile range EV and need to justify using it for 30 years? Without knowing how much it cost we cannot predict ahead of time. From what I see at work and among friends, people buying those 300 miles EV only need .... 40 miles a day. They are buying a 300 miles EV because of range anxiety, when they could have gotten a $4 Nissan Leaf with only 60 miles left instead of a $35k Tesla.

The weirdest argument is "rebalancing battery weight". You don't think engineer knows how to mount something with center of gravity in mind?

Lithium ion battery of any kind should gradually reduce capacity over the years. You don't need to start out building 30% range battery, you can start out building 100% range, then as it age and when swap station or batteries owners would have originally sold the car at 70% range, rent it out as 70% range battery for many more years, then degrade it to 30% range for the local users looking for bargains, then maybe at 20% the battery is physically dead. Most people retire a battery when the range is too low, not when they are permanently damaged (this is like your phone battery). Having variable age (therefore range) available at different price means these can be used way longer in years.

 

[PandaBear]

You are right, we should take electric stoves and ovens away, and clothes dryers, in favor of centralized restaurants and laundry mats. We can't have these arbitrary 10kW loads appearing willy-nilly on The Precious Delicate Grid. Rather, we need megawatt loads switching on and off!

No, (100) 10kW connections (they are not chargers) is infinitely better than one centralized megawatt charger. And less than 1/25th of the cost.

Apartment listings around here include a checkbox as to whether EV charging is available. Craigslist has a checkbox under housing search.


So now you want to put multiple megawatt chargers on the same branch, which means only one at a time can be used. You really are determined to force The Gas Station Model on EV users. Which simply proves you have absolutely no experience with EVs, that you are an Internet Intellectual Who Has Thought Upon Things And Now Knows The One True Way.

Most megawatt chargers are in common places people visit: highway supercharger stations, Target, Costco, class A office buildings in downtown, etc. They already need huge grid connection for their function. The Target I go to has 15 Supercharger in a row already, they already need MW connection. People charge with a lot less time in a store than at their own home, so yes, only one at a time can use it is a good thing because many more people want to come for a very short time instead of all sitting there waiting for a long time.

Think of it like your internet: your home probably only need 100mbps, and a data center need 10000x that.

 

[PandaBear]

Are you lining up to bet your retirement on this? You seem to deeply believe in it.

Has failed every time it has been tried. No investor would allow the battery to be rented at a rate less than it's wear and tear, and risk of loss. When tallied up the only "investor" willing to bet on caring for the battery's good health is the EV owner.

Your retirement fund already own some auto loans, and indirectly own some EV loans, and therefore indirectly own some EV battery depreciation risk.

 

[JeffKeryk]

@PandaBear the battery swap plan is ridiculous. How many of these stations will be needed and where? How many batteries will they stock? You probably need 10x batteries to EVs. Idle inventory is evil and you are using far more energy to keep them charged vs 1 battery per car. Batteries are heavy and require specialized equipment to move and swap out.

Where is the benefit? There is none.

Just continue to build out the charging infrastructure, including condos, apartments and work places. Plug in for 10-15 minutes and go when on the road. Plug in when you get home and forget about it.

Think about it; EV fueling is already easier and more convenient than ICE for many people today. Like me. And waaaaaaay cheaper in many cases.

 

[PandaBear]

We will never be swapping batteries. Way too expensive to build out. Might as well toss the whole lithium EV thing in the waste basket in that case.

China has solved the issue already and more solutions will come our way. But we arent going to be swapping batteries in 300 million vehicles.

The expense part I do agree is a huge risk for anyone investing in it.

I think unless we follow those CPO auto lease model it would be hard to finance the risk: you need people having a way to unload the uncertainty after a while and only bet on the certain part: still under warranty, initiated by the manufacturer. Of all the EV makers only Tesla had taken on such risk to build supercharger network and now that they have matured, and went to structural battery, and opened the network to other brands, there is no momentum to build out a network of swap station to compete with an existing standard.

Maybe I'm just different in a way that I see battery as a liability instead of an asset. I don't want to own something that I only use once in a while and will certainly wear out in 15-20 years whether I use it or not. I like to own a car just right and then rent special need vehicles as needed. People who buy vehicles for worst case scenarios or their dream (it can tow a boat)

 

[JeffKeryk]

The expense part I do agree is a huge risk for anyone investing in it.

I think unless we follow those CPO auto lease model it would be hard to finance the risk: you need people having a way to unload the uncertainty after a while and only bet on the certain part: still under warranty, initiated by the manufacturer. Of all the EV makers only Tesla had taken on such risk to build supercharger network and now that they have matured, and went to structural battery, and opened the network to other brands, there is no momentum to build out a network of swap station to compete with an existing standard.

Maybe I'm just different in a way that I see battery as a liability instead of an asset. I don't want to own something that I only use once in a while and will certainly wear out in 15-20 years whether I use it or not. I like to own a car just right and then rent special need vehicles as needed. People who buy vehicles for worst case scenarios or their dream (it can tow a boat)

Yes, cars are depreciating assets.
Tesla was the pioneer and did revolutionary things; they were the innovators. Today Tesla is in trouble; their future, at least in the short term, may be suspect.

 

[PandaBear]

@PandaBear the battery swap plan is ridiculous. How many of these stations will be needed and where? How many batteries will they stock? You probably need 10x batteries to EVs. Idle inventory is evil and you are using far more energy to keep them charged vs 1 battery per car. Batteries are heavy and require specialized equipment to move and swap out.

Where is the benefit? There is none.

Just continue to build out the charging infrastructure, including condos, apartments and work places. Plug in for 10-15 minutes and go when on the road. Plug in when you get home and forget about it.

Think about it; EV fueling is already easier and more convenient than ICE for many people today. Like me. And waaaaaaay cheaper in many cases.

Very good point. I was thinking more of a "you can still charge your EV even if you can swap" scenario where you just plug it in like a normal EV, and only swap when you need to on the road with no time to charge. That way you don't need too many batteries, and most people don't need to over purchase for their range anxiety.

On the other hand everyone may want to get the large battery on Thanksgiving week and there will be none. There is no solution to seasonal demand surge other than someone keeping idle inventory (whether it is on the car as spare capacity or in the swap station waiting for people to swap).

Maybe an expensive equipment idling because of cheap batteries or charging time limitation can be addressed by swapping, like a semi that runs 247. But for a passenger EV which the battery is the most expensive part, maybe swapping won't do much more than having an extra EV around.

 

[Torrid]

@PandaBear the battery swap plan is ridiculous. How many of these stations will be needed and where? How many batteries will they stock? You probably need 10x batteries to EVs. Idle inventory is evil and you are using far more energy to keep them charged vs 1 battery per car. Batteries are heavy and require specialized equipment to move and swap out.

Where is the benefit? There is none.

Just continue to build out the charging infrastructure, including condos, apartments and work places. Plug in for 10-15 minutes and go when on the road. Plug in when you get home and forget about it.

Think about it; EV fueling is already easier and more convenient than ICE for many people today. Like me. And waaaaaaay cheaper in many cases.

There are some companies in China doing it. I saw Kyle Connor do a video on a car with the feature and filmed the process from inside the car. It's interesting and a pretty quick process, but this is definitely not a feature that's going to be necessary for the majority of drivers. They also offer different sizes of batteries for a different monthly subscriptions. Personally I'd rather just have the same battery that I know the condition from using it every day. I see this as being a major service each time it's swapped. It can't be good for the components to be constantly unplugged and plugged in along with the screws being constantly removed and reinstalled.