Battery swapping is a technology that could solve one key barrier for EV adoption: consumers’ range anxiety and the long waiting time for battery charging. Wouldn’t you feel more assured on a weekend trip if you knew you could stop at a swap station and replace depleted battery packs with fully charged ones in five minutes? But this isn’t easy to do, as Tesla and Better Place’s past failures. In China, however, battery swapping has been a reality for a couple of years. How did Chinese companies like Nio make it work with 2,300 swapping stations nationwide? What can companies outside China learn from the Chinese experience?

See, Apple? Even cars can do it :)

    • umami_wasabi@lemmy.mlEnglish
      112·
      5 months ago

      Subscription for my car? Don’t we have too much subscriptions already?

      And neither solve the ownship problem, and a tons of other problems.

        • umami_wasabi@lemmy.mlEnglish
          5·
          5 months ago

          Gas is more like pas-as-you-go. Battery no so sure. And they are different by nature: gas can’t be reused, batteries can.

          • Brkdncr@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            5 months ago

            The energy inside both can’t be reused. Both a gas tank and battery can be refilled.

            Gas is just easier to transfer between containers. Electricity needs it be moved inside its container.

            • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              1·
              5 months ago

              Electricity is incredibly easy to move between containers. That’s how electric cars work.

              Making charging faster by removing most of the range (because you have way less volume to use if it’s removable) and making a cheap power source obscenely expensive makes no sense.

    • slaacaa@lemmy.worldEnglish
      62·
      5 months ago

      You pay a monthly fee (lease) that contains a certain number of swaps per month, above which you pay extra. The car is also cheaper this way, as you are not paying the full price of the the battery up front

    • TAG@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      5 months ago

      The model only works if users are forced to subscribe to a battery swapping service for the full life of the vehicle (or there is a large upfront fee to join with a used vehicle). Otherwise it would be too easy for a consumer with a worn out battery to do a one-time swap and get a like-new battery as a cheap alternative to very costly battery repairs. The dumped battery is likely to have very poor range and the battery swap company will need to dispose of it.