Why Battery Swapping Is A BAD Idea 

as a nio car owner in china, here's how things actually done. a typical 2nd gen nio battery swap station tipically houses 10-13 batteries. and the whole station takes up 3 standard parking spots. and it can swap battries at around 5min per viechel. and one empty battry takes 50-60mins to charge to full. so the idea is that, say if you are the first one to swap, by the time the 10th person is swapping, your old battery that you swaped 50min ago, is now full again and ready to be swaped to the next person. by doing this, nio has achived non-stop battery swap, using minimum resources. i've been a nio es6 driver in shenzhen china for two years now, there are around 30 swap station in my city and i've done almost 200 swaps. best of all its free of charge. i relally find it easy and coivent.

I think this video forgot to mention when you have a swappable battery platform you have 2 options, either you can charge the battery or use a swapping station.

Maybe while hotswapping is not the best idea, the concept of universal batteries could work by giving owners of EVs alternatives for when their current battery dies...

I didn't listen to a word he said. I was in a state of shock from his hoodie

There are several misconceptions in this video, the main of which is that battery swapping is just an alternative to chargers. Its purposes are varied: 1) Alleviates range anxiety for those long trips (you can still use chargers for regular city use). 2) Under the BaaS (Battery as a Service) model customers can actually switch out batteries for newer and longer-distance ones, they are not tied to a single battery for the entire car's life cycle. If a new battery is released, it's made available to the pre-existing cars. So if you just bought a car with a 100 kw battery and NIO comes out with a 200 KW battery, it just takes 3 minutes to upgrade to it. 3) No battery wastage. Your precious Tesla is junk after a few years or you have to pay like 20k for a battery replacement - absolute bonkers. With the BaaS model your battery is always in good condition. 4) You can actually swap your battery for a larger one just for a long trip, and then switch back to your usual (cheaper) size for daily use. 5) When autonomous driving kicks in, companies with swap station infrastructure will be ready for fully automatic recharging, while Tesla owners will still have to fiddle around with charging cables and wait for an hour for the car to charge - hardly a seamless experience. I could go on and on.

Battery swapping makes a lot of sense for heavy duty vehicles. Lorries can have much smaller batteries, possibly 200 miles will be sufficient, allowing more goods to be carried. Most batteries can also be charged when demand for electricity is low, saving renewables that would otherwise be wasted.

Faster charge rate = hotter battery leading to degrading battery!

The world agreed on domestic battery standards, why not vehicle battery standards? No need for mechanised swap stations, and if the batteries made smaller and modular, any bad cells can be isolated and sent back to manufacturer easily. If you have ever played with Radio controlled vehicles in your life you'd know a removable batteries is a godsend. Nobody got time to wait for a charge.

Some people are held back from buying EVs because they are afraid of their battery going bad or becoming obsolete with better tech. Battery swapping can alleviate that fear. It can also alleviate the high up-front cost of buying an EV. Catl is pioneering sodium ion batteries. Sodium is 1000x more abundant than lithium and is easily recycled. Sodium ion is better in almost every way than lithium batteries except for density. But you could have a low range sodium ion battery as a daily driver and swap it for a high range battery for long trips. Also you could just charge your batteries as always and just swap them if it made sense for your life style or immediate need.

You really did minimal work before come to a conclusion battery swapping is a bad idea. Apparently it’s working and working very good in every places now.

Battery swapping has additional benefit that was under the radar.. Quick charging batteries degrade them faster. We will need physically less resources to sustain such system (resources for new batteries) (although bigger investment of resources on start)

I believe India are implementing standard battery formats so they can be swapped across multiple vehicle types. Granted it is only light vehicles like scooters, bikes & them tuk tuk thingymajigs but if they are actually mandating the change to any new vehicles it's a bloody good start - I'm not 100% on the details. Smaller format battery packs would then be able to be used on a lot of bigger vehicles too i.e. 1 pack for a scooter, 2 for a motorbike, 4 for a tuk tuk, 8 for a small car, 16 for a large one - you get the idea. You could pay more for the convenience of swapping out batteries for fully charged ones instantly, or simply recharge them yourself if you aren't in a rush. The rest of the world should follow suit so any battery pack will fit any car in the future. The only stumbling block is economics to make it viable & value for money compared to how it is done now as there are many variables to consider. Apologies if any of this is covered in the video, I haven't watched it yet lol ;p

I thought manufacturers were now making the battery an integral part of the structure of the car to save weight - this would imply it’s difficult for such a battery to be made replaceable at all?

I always forget that one can still charge their Nio, it's not swapping only.

I think you need to revisit this topic again after a year has passed.

EU has enforced USB on Apple, so why can't it enforce standard batteries for EVs???

This may have a spot in transport where you have fast turnaround for a delivery truck and the depot has a swap station i.e. something on a more or less set route - a bit like having a hydrogen pump at the depot.

Everyone said NIO can’t make BAS work but so far they seem to be doing great- I wouldn’t doubt NIO

I have a new idea for cars!! it's called the internal combustion engine . It runs on gasoline only! You can fill your tank in a couple of minutes... you don't have to wait for an hour!!

Some years ago I saw the video of the battery swap 'Supercharging' stations that Tesla were planning. I was amazed.

You would have to create a universal battery standard. I think for HD Trucks, it would be a great service to have them scattered near mountain. Maybe just a Kicker battery that is mounted in addition to the everyday battery. Just for extended range on big loads. Big project!

It honestly seems like a standardization and upgrade nightmare. First you need all the car makers to agree on a small number of standards. Multiple standards for different sizes of battery will increase the number of spare batteries the swapping stations need to keep on hand. They have to support big cars, small cars, low power cars, high power cars, all with the same standards. And then as the tech improves with higher energy density or higher power density, it sounds like a nightmare to roll out new versions. They'd have to roll out a set of the new batteries to every swap station very soon after launch. And you'll still need to support the old standards for ~20 years until the old cars are phased out. Are the swapping stations prepared to support 10 different standards between different use cases and legacy cars? Charging standards don't really have this issue. Aside from Tesla dragging its heels, the plugs are standard and will work up to 350kw. And if changes are needed for higher power, it's much easier to make backward and forward compatible plugs than entire battery packs. Or to create adapters if more drastic changes are needed. I could see it for fleets like busses, semis, or mail trucks. But those would require fewer standards and they'd have more control over phasing out old standards.

the sweater kept me more captivated than the content

For delivery vehicles and taxis, it could be a great option, so a driver can get quickly back on the road, especially if a company only have the same vehicles. But, not only because we offer home chargers, but because it makes more sense, charging is the future of EVs, matching your home or public charger with solar panels is the sustainability winner! Great video! Thank you for sharing 🔌⚡🚘

Fast charging has got so good that swapping no longer makes much sense. If it takes roughly the same amount of time to do, I would much rather not taking apart my car every time I need to go some extra miles

Considering it costs £20,000 to have your EV battery replaced and therefore practically makes your 5 to 7 year old car worthless I think this is the perfect solution, not only getting a full charge in the same time it takes to fill your tank with petrol and pay, but also never having to worry about your car being devalued due to a pending new battery required.

Very interesting video mate 👌

I can see a few strategically placed stations to alleviate long trip / range anxiety issues but by there nature the usage would be light so not cost effective for the supplier. Better would be for smaller HGV local work where the weight of batteries could be smaller but the downtime much less per vehicle for the operator

Spot on Rory. One other point is the maintenance required by the system. Installing costs money, maintaining and manning it costs tenfold. Especially in the colder European weather, where cars come into the system wet, muddy and salty most of the year. The system will wear, its complex mechanics and sensors will fail. Ever tried keeping an outdoor escalator running? We have one partially covered in our building. And guess what? It’s always busted, as is the outdoor wheelchair lift. The most important point is heating the system, batteries need to be charged at optimal temperatures, the system needs to be warm or it will freeze. Heating is expensive. My list goes on. Just improve the charging infrastructure and increase speeds. Sorted.

500KG lump bolted to bottom of a car by a roadside vending machine..Errr no… My car goes 250 miles… so after 3.5-4 hours of driving, I’m fine with 30 mins of charging and a little break thanks.

”Just for Nios”? Imagine a charging station just for Teslas?

Battery swapping is one direction of the future bcos of simplified ownership structure. Many Europeans prefer Nio for this exact same reason of simplified ownership. Fast recharging, get latest battery technology and low cost of ownership. China as you mentioned is easy to integrate cos many accept government leadership. Even in Europe with battery pack of 1000 km range it’s not a challenge to have many recharge locations even at higher land prices. Just because Tesla and Renault couldn’t succeed with battery swapping, it doesn’t means it’s not gonna be a success. Battery swapping needs volume. This is one reason it’s so successful in China.

As an EV owner of 3 years on my second Leaf, I have to agree with you. Battery swapping seems a great idea, however, when you’ve owned an EV you realise it’s trying to solve a problem that’s not there. Like most EV owners I charge overnight. I have no off street parking so I plug into a street lamp in a residents charging bay. My car is my personal and driving school car so, on a day to day basis, I go out and do a days work then plug in again overnight. Battery swapping has no advantage compared to overnight charging. It would be more inconvenient because it would require a trip to a battery swap station and at 6:00 in the evening probably a wait in a queue. 15 seconds each evening and my car is plugged in near home. Then there’s long journeys. The rapid charging network does have room for improvement. I’ve not ever been let down by it but have been mildly inconvenienced. The network is improving though, especially in the last year. No longer is charging a solitary charger in the corner of a dark car park but rows of shiny chargers. My envy for Teslas and their Superchargers has still made me order a Model 3 though. Tesla just got it right. On long journeys rapid chargers usually coincide with a toilet break or food so the wait isn’t a problem. And while rapid charging costs more than overnight charging it’s still cheaper than running an ICE car. This is why battery swapping won’t find a market. As you say in the video, the scale and cost of the facility to store and charge enough batteries to to give drivers that 5 minute turn around without a queue will make it more expensive than rapid charging. The amount of people who will need this fast turnaround after a couple of hours driving is going to be small. As you said, is it worth it to save 12 minutes. As us humans need toilet breaks and food a battery swap will increase the time for these breaks as you have to be with the car while the battery swaps before you can get to the food or toilet, rather than about 30 seconds to connect to a rapid. Some manufacturers are moving to structural battery packs to cut down manufacturing time and costs, and vehicle weight. This will increase range and reduce prices. A structural battery couldn’t be swapped. Battery swap might have worked if it had been adopted initially and EVs had no way to charge other than battery swapping. It would have needed agreement of a standard from all manufacturers because as soon as one put a charge socket on a car owners would start charging overnight and ruin the business model. It would also have needed enormous investment in swap stations up front. Nio are making some very nice cars. Hopefully the UK s one of the European countries they’re exporting to. I think they will be charged just like any other EV with a few battery swap stations that are a marketing tool.

What about integrating swap stations to store renewable energy? Using them as grid support units will be an important factor to consider. Swapping will be most viable for the micro mobility segment but any scenario where a quick turn around time is needed can benefit by this once doomed technology!

Nice! I was so afraid the video wasnt going to discuss both sides of the argument :). great work.

Great points about battery swapping. I, too, had the thought when I initially got into electric cars in 2014. But like you said, with the charging rates that we are currently seeing, it just makes much more sense to focus on making the charging infrastructure more ubiquitous, robust, and reliable.

interesting video.. 1) NIO has rolled out 200,000 cars.. that's a contribution of around $3,000 USD/car to fund the swapstation network. 2) Customers get to pay less upfront for the car though when they lease it, and NIO recognizes full price 3) the ability to lease a small capacity for city, and swap a big one when traveling 4).no degradation to worry about...all that being said, swapping makes more sense in China and not in the US

Is this a subtle dig at the Fifth Gear Nio video

Whatever happened to swappable aluminium-air batteries? The theory was high density batteries that could be swapped quicker than filling your car with petrol, however as you can't charge them yourself, there has to be a large-scale recycling system in place to handle them... and we're not exactly shit-hot on that front right now.

I loved that argument you presented and it makes sense. I’ll have to take while to mull it over to offer a counter argument. Great blog as always, however, that hoodie, come on mate. If you’re going to get serious on us 😂 Great blog - you’re the best out there. Respect ✊🏻

Solid state battery technology sounds like the real solution to charging a battery quickly. I also don't think most drivers, electric or gas powered are going on long road trips that often anyway. Charging from home isn't a big deal even if it takes all night to charge, wake up in the morning, remove the charging plug and your good to go for 2-3 days...

Battery swapping also makes a lot of sense in situations where there is inclement weather, such as areas in the desert or that receive very cold winters that affect battery performance and life. It also would be prudent to perhaps situate the stations along highways where people use them for road-tripping, such as interstates in larger countries and international highways in smaller ones. People could charge when they're using them as a daily driver by plugging in at home, work, or the grocery store, then could swap when going on a longer trip, such as a vacation or business trip. What would be useful is an idea similar to the Chocosebs. Instead of making a universal battery pack for every vehicle, which would limit design and ingenuity much the way cars were in Soviet Russia and East Germany (Lada, Trabant, anyone?). This would make it possible to swap individual cells via access panels rather than swapping the entire pack. Individual cells would allow manufacturers more freedom of design and innovation, kind of like how CDs, DVDs, and Bluray discs all are the same size. It would also allow upgrading in the future. Replace your 20 KWH cells with 30 KWH cells in five years and get more range, for example. Also, copyright pending on that idea if anyone wants it!

When I worked at a distribution center and our forklift batteries got low we would switch them out and be on our way in a matter of minutes. Charging can go wrong and stuff there should be a swap system as a back up.

they have proven it to be effective for years now. im opting for nio over tesla because they look better, more practical and the bettery swap tech is an absolute game changer. i woukd rather swap my battery out for full for only 3mins than wait 45mins-1hr to charge to full.

The company that developed the Renault Twizy also toyed with the idea of swapping batteries at stations back in the 00s. it was literally the first thing Renault scrapped when they bought the rights. and this "swapping" concept even goes back to the 1950s when they were working on nuclear powered cars!

Adding swapping means having the ability to add capacity occasionally, but mostly just means u lease a small pack for your daily commute, then u swap it out for the occasional road trip. Makes the journeys around town even more efficient when the pack is only good for 60miles and weighs barely 🪶

3 extra considerations Rory: 1. When these batteries are not in use, they can serve as connected grid storage. That is a revenue source within itself. 2. Not owning the battery has huge appeal, given that the principle depreciating component in an EV is the battery. 3. Surely you can charge these vehicles conventionally, so yes, I agree with your maths on size and time needed, and in cities, it's not viable, but maybe I start my journey in a city, charge conventionally, and then swap out at strategy positioned spots along magor motorways. Because your analysis assumes mutual exclusivity, it's limited. Doesn't have to be!

Another problem is battery production volume; it's very limited. So all the batteries going into a car is paid by the customer UPFRONT! Whereas sitting there in the charging station takes time to get the money worth.

I was into battery swapping before. But later, after heading back to square one and thinking again why we humans benefit so much from electricity is because of it's ability to store and transfer energy so quickly and controllably. This means, heading back to mechanical ways of moving energy tops out at a point where time and energy required to move the battery back and forth becomes more expensive than moving electrons.

I think the demand for battery swapping really comes from a combination of range anxiety and charging cycle anxiety. We all own smartphones these days, and we all know the fact that, at some point, it's gonna use up its charge cycles and you might need to get a new phone because of that. Since these EVs use the same kind of battery, everyone knows at the back of their head that this will eventually happen, so there is genuine concern for the longevity of the car. The thinking behind battery swapping is that, if a battery is swapped instead of charged, you never have to worry about charge cycles. But I think what we really need is good right-to-repair legislation so that when the time comes for a battery replacement, manufacturers and dealers aren't screwing you over and forcing you to buy a new car 10 years down the road when a battery replacement would have been sufficient.

Brilliant video. Thank you.

Excellent video Rory - I have been saying battery swopping is the only way since the day I heard of an electric car - but clearly it is not so simple.

It was always a misguided idea. The cost, infrastructure, and collaboration required make this inefficient. Not to mention if it can only do 1-2 cars at a time the wait time selling point is completely defeated.

It's funny how batteries were initially pretty much universal from aaa to car batteries and ever since the smart phone, laptops and electric cars they have become proprietary. If they could make electric car batteries universal then this might just work.

There are a lot of advantages. 1) You can buy a cheap car now with a small batter and just swap out as batteries get cheaper or you get richer. 2) Quick swapping means you can do with less battery, which means less cost and weight. 3) helps resale of cars since I buyer does not have to worry battery is damaged. It would make car companies outside of China more willing to make EVs since the battery is now decoupled. 4) Leasing batteries would give dealerships a way to make money after the sale.

Like FCEVs,it is a non-starter. One additional thing wrong with it is that the best electrical connectors are going to give trouble after being repeatedly plugged in and out dozens of times. Just like a wall socket that loses the ability to hold a plug securely after many uses.

Works better for scooters

You make the point about "charge rates are only going to get even better with each new improvement". This just emphasises the fact that purchasing an EV now is money down the drain. Who will want to buy your second hand EV with a charge time sometime between 30 and 60 minutes, the low used price will reflect that. There are way too many known not knowns, let alone the unknown not knows, with EVs at the moment. Many people are going to get their fingers well and truly burnt!

Battery swapping is great for EV owners in China because a lot of them live in apartment buildings that do not have private garages that can provide overnight charging in their own homes. Besides, the swapping of batteries is just an added feature on top of charging stations. I’m all for it.

This reminds me of mechanical TV sets (going way back here). It's kind of over-engineered to solve the basic problem of: I need to get energy from A into B.

I could see battery swapping for School Buses, Mail/Post Carriers, Amazon delivery, and other industrial/private use applications where a large owner can maintain that. But that "12 minutes" he described, that could easily be eaten up going to some remote battery swapping station, waiting in line, etc. Cheaper and more efficient to just charge the thing.

At some point, the bottleneck is still how fast can you charge the battery pack. So it makes sense to directly tackle charging speed instead of workarounds. esp for large vehicles.

This is only taking into account personal vehicles but for commercial 3 wheelers and other last mile logistics it makes a lot of sense

Will they charge for battery also while buying a new car?

You praise supercharging and how it becomes faster and faster, but supercharging also comes with the cost of lower battery lifetime! What people don't get is that Nio for example doesn't plan to operate battery swap stations only. Nio has its Power Portfolio where you have the option to swap the battery. Sure you could use the swapping if you have no option to charge you car at home or maybe because you only want to battery swap. The basic idea is that battery swap coexists with super- and common charging to use the matching technology for the fitting scenario. In this case you only need to build a certain ammount of swap stations and not to cover all areas. Highways are the best example. If you rent a battery of Nio you get: - Some kWh of free charging and some free swaps - upgradebility of new and better batteries(Nio added a 75kWh battery to its 70kWh with better winter performence) - no worry if the battery dies - no you don't get a sluggy battery because as you swap the battery it runs a diagnosis on it Yes you need a certain amount of betteries 13/swap station in Nio's case but they are charged at rates and temperature which helps expanding the lifetime of each battery. What I didn't get was you compairson of swapping vs supercharging speed.? A Nio swap station takes up four supercharging spaces. So you have 312 swaps a day from 0-100%. It takes half an hour to charge a model 3 to 80% and one hour to 100%. So lets even take the 80% ok, 4 cars to 80% in 30mins equals 8/hour. Thats 192 cars from 0-80% in one day for the same space as one Nio swap station with 312 swaps from 0-100%.

Ev altogether is a bad idea.

what is the name of the song played at the end?

Does the UK have a super charging station like the one you show in the US?

Battery swapping makes perfect sense for densely populated areas .. especially is large cities. It makes a lot of sense to take the battery out of the car since battery can be maintained or repaired outside of the car. Also, swappable batteries also means continuity for battery evolution. Car owners also don't have to worry about battery failures or battery life cycle. All EVs should have charging and how swap capabilities .. best of both worlds. A lot gas station can be retrofitted to include battery swap service. Need to think outside the box.

When I first heard about 'range anxiety' my first thought was to introduce battery swapping, it made a lot of sense a the time... but today the EV industry is too diverse in Ev implementation, the design, the kwhrs.. charging systems...

nice one mate

£600000 is nothing for construction. Manufacturers could agree together upon a standard to get this working. The standard would only need to be on the form factor not on the cell technology as you could select the cell tech at the station depending on your requirements. Cell swapping could also be done by hand in banks of batteries, service station staff could do this and during afterhours people could rely on charging instead

Very timely video! Battery swapping was a topic of conversation in the pub yesterday. Looks like it's not going to be an alternative for big cars any time soon. My mate is getting a Polestar and intends to drive it from London to Madrid and back, on a long route via various other towns. Good luck with that, Ryan. He's going to need military levels of planning and timing all the way through France and Spain.

Maybe swapping can also get faster, cheaper, and more standardized as the engineering advances. No need for a complete halt to the idea, there may be room for It as a better solution in certain situations.

Sounds nice but a logistical nightmare at my local supermarket they have eight charging bays and a queue yhey would need a shed the size of the supermarket to store and charge , the one thing not mentioned, say I run out go juice would I be able to charge it in the normal way i.e. mobile battery boosting service or plug in will it need a recovery truck.

Battery swapping would reduce lithium usage. It would allow cars to be shipped with much smaller batteries you could then swap to a bigger battery when you need to do a long distance drive.

Battery swapping is a GREAT idea. As a share holder of NIO, I can tell you a lot of arguments in your video is wrong. First of all, swapping is a feature on top of regular charging. It is designed mainly for long trip. Just imagine spending an hour to charge a EV every few hours of driving, swapping that in few minutes is a great idea. Secondly each station only need to keep 12 battery inside, compare to the amount of cars NIO made, battery in station is a very small amount.

Newer/future Tesla’s have their battery pack as part of the frame structure. You could remove it, but it could be tricky or time consuming.

If you’re taking really good care of your battery by not leaving it standing around at high percentages, why would you want to risk getting a run-down, degraded one from the swap station? And if you got a run-down one, aren’t you in a way incentivized to just get a new one from the swap station that is definitely gonna be better? Also, with a 150kwh battery pack from NIO, you can go for 750km at a reasonable consumption of 20kWh/100km. After 750km, you’re gonna want to make a half-hour charging stop before doing another 750km. Seriously, where is the market in shaving like 25 minutes off your 1500km holiday trip?

Battery swapping would take more of my time than charging. I have to sit in the car while the swap happens. For charging I park, plug in, go off to pee/eat/etc, unplug, leave. That's a few seconds charging for me. This is what people don't get. My car spends time charging. I do not.

I agree 100%. Battery swapping is a stupid dream, with no purpose, economic case, or technical ability. What you gain: - During the occasional road trip, "charging" now takes 5 minutes instead of 20 What you lose: - You no longer own your battery, it has to be leased with a monthly fee - Stations are now almost 10 times more expensive (600,000€ for a swapping station vs an average of 70,000€ for an Ionity hypercharger) - That means they're 10 times less abundant - Not to mention, chargers serve all brands, swappers only your own, so it will be even LESS common to find a working station - Also, since there's fewer of them, there WILL be queues - Not to mention that during rush hour, batteries may just simply run out - The battery needs more robust casing, so weight goes up, efficiency goes down - Cars have to be built around the shape of the battery, so interior packaging suffers - And all of that will be more expensive than if you just simply charged for 15 minutes longer And at the end of it all, the truth is, you can leave your car while it's charging and go do other things you do on a typical stop, food, bathroom, etc., no such option with a swap, so total time stopped will be the same anyway. Battery swapping is idiotic.

please tell me what is the model of you camera i asked you many times

Its actually a great idea. One of the issues with the 2nd hand market is the big unknown over battery condition. It also means that day to day you can carry a smaller lighter battery, and when you go on a long trip you swap for a long range heavy battery.

I feel there is one aspect heavily overlooked here. EV's really only make sense if you can produce the electricity using renewable energy. And like Elon Musk said himself, producing that energy isn't the problem; it's getting it when you need it, where you need it (paraphrasing...). 360kW chargers make no sense if that peak load forces us to spin up a generator that runs on fossil fuel. We need to find ways to match up energy demand with the availability of renewable energy. That means changing our behaviour or changing our renewable energy production. Audi is a good example of how NOT to do it: if you need a 100kWh battery to hardly get to 300 miles and to compensate, you put a very fast charger in there, you completely missed the point of driving an EV. If we can't get that renewable energy producted at the level at which we need it, we need to change our charging behaviour to match the production we can meet. That's why I think, swappable batteries deserve another consideration. You can continue driving, while your used battery will charge when the renewable energy is available. They can be charged fast during the day or during heavy winds and slow during calm nights. And all the while, you still get to your destination, without even thinking of the weather.

with the latest fast chargers you usually only need 5 to 10 minutes to charge anyway on road trip stops. I was a bit worried about it before buying an EV but since having one it has been a total non issue. plus even if your road trip routes take a long stop or two, you save time the rest of your life charging at home and never going to gas stations.

A bit of a VHS vs Betamax moment. The better technology dosen't always win. If multiple companies can't decide on a common standard for battery swapping, it's finished.

Here is a silly idea.. Every shopping centre has a car park.. install a swap and go in each car park.. In Australia, you turn up to a recharge point.. And there isn't enough.. You have to wait for some wanker to come back..

What I think? I agree with you. Makes no sense. Especially not for cars with fast charging like Hyundai, Kia, Porsche, etc.

THE. FINAL. FORM. Your home battery pack can be shared with your car. It’s installed in the floor of your garage. If you’re commuting, you only carry a small pack while you’re out and about that can quickly fast charge. If you need to go for a longer drive (which is usually planned) slap in some more kw before leaving the house and go. While you’re not using the batteries in the car, they function as a battery backup for the house.

Still sounds like a great idea compared to what's available today. They just don't want this tech to work so when the battery in your EV dies it's so expensive to replace you just buy a new car.

This video didn't age well... NIO and their battery swapping is now in partnership with Geely and Changan (2nd largest automobile company in China).

Battery swapping is a very old idea, going back to the early 1990's. Before the advent of powerful lithium batteries and modern 'skateboard' platforms, it was thought that automotive EV batteries would be far more modular and universal, allowing most gas stations to act as battery charge & swap stations as well. The reality however is that such a system would be horribly impractical and inefficient with the 90's lead-acid battery technology of the time. It looks as if these Chinese companies have the problem somewhat streamlined with their automated swapping stations, but it still appears more gimmicky than practical. However the idea of a more replaceable and modular battery pack in EVs is very practical, since one of the greatest expenses in EV repair is in replacing dead and worn out battery packs, as dozens of RU-vid videos can testify to. Until replacing battery packs is made simpler, I would never recommend purchasing a used Tesla or any other EV for that matter.

If a fast charger can charge 80% of my electric car in 20 minutes an expensive battery swap station doesn't make sense anymore.

bruh, you were mad to do these videos..you always do a fantastic job at it.

I recently went from the coast in the south of France to Paris in an MG4, so not a Tesla and this was really no trouble at all. Each time we stopped the battery was charged pretty much to the max in the time it took to get a coffee and go to the bathroom! One trick, if you travel on France, look for Lidl stores, a lot of them offer 130 kWh rapid chargers priced at €0.40 per kW

Hydrogen powered vehicles makes a lot more sense for a large majority of the transportation sector, imo. Personal EVs need further battery development so they can charge much faster and offer a reliable range estimate.

Don't believe 72 stalls for tesla cost less than nio . Takes 10x more space and when you charge 2 cars from the same charger you get half the speed.

This is precisely why EVs need standardized battery receptacles. We could then have standardized battery blocks (like the Choco-SEBs seen in this video) manufactured from competing companies, Samsung, Tesla, Ford, whoever... Have these blocks be small enough to be human-manageable/liftable, and format EV battery receptacles to hold multiple (depending on necessary range/weight/aero). Then you don't need a big automated battery swapping station, you could just charge these battery blocks out back at Phillis & Bob's Fuel & Booze... Phillis could keep them charging throughout the day, then when you arrive for a swap, take a break from smoking meth by the charging station to come pop a few new cells in! This system would work wonderfully.

Producer: "So, how distracting do you want your Hoodie to be?" Rory: "Yes!"

At last …. someone is being realistic about this subject. Never catching on.