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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ธ.ค. 2024
- Nio is a Chinese auto maker that offers an alternative to charging: just swapping out the whole battery whenever you need it. I borrowed one of their cars. ■ Nio: www.nio.com/
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This may be obvious to folks who already follow EVs, but for me as an outsider: there are so many more manufacturers, and so many more innovations, than I thought!
I agree!
Was this in real-time?
Looking at china's geopolitical situation and struggling economy leads me to believe this will be abandoned and dead in before the end of the decade. I'd be very careful about the claims made in the video, state-owned chinese companies are not the most reliable sources of anything.
How long did the battery swap actually take, start to finish?
I watched a news video something very similar (possibly same company) about a battery swapping station years ago and then nothing until now. Thanks T.S.
I own Nio. Battery swap was the main reason I bought one (in China). There is one benefit that is not often mentioned. Nio offers 3 battery sizes you can choose when purchasing the vehicle. I opted the smallest one. Driving in city mostly, the range is more than enough. If I want to drive long distance, I can rent and swap the largest battery they have, do my driving, and return it in the destination. Very affordable solution since the renting for a day or two is not expensive. Also if they would come out with a new battery, you can have access to it and swap. From user point of view, this is all great. but... unless Nio partners with more brands to be able to build these stations at scale, the business model is not sustainable. There simply isn't enough Nio cars to justify building a huge network of these stations. I have 2 stations nearby where I live, but that is city. Outside of large cities, there's nothing.
Out of curiosity, what counts as a long drive in China? I know it's a big country, but my understanding is the rail network is far more developed than compared to the United States. Americans drive as their primary means of transportation, but when would you choose to drive instead of taking a train?
have you had bad battery when swapping? or any trouble when swapping at destination? I've seen power bank rental which does this, and I have problem returning them just because they don't have slot to return the power bank. wonder what they will do when this swapping station need to scale up.
@@Wickedywack well, that depends. I do driving to visit family that is 800kms, but for holidays it could be 17,000kms which I have done this autumn. I think most ppl stay within 1,000km for general driving visiting families.
@@1finalfailure it used to be "free service" as incentive for buying their cars. They have stopped this earlier this year. That service had limit 5x a month, which was generally enough for a month of driving around and in a city. Since now you pay for each swap, you are not limited and you can change as you please.
Plus...China. Sorry but I wouldn't trust anything so much a part of my daily life to any entity in China. Because of the CCP.
This would be good for buses imo, come back from doing a route and have a swapped out, fully charged battery ready to go and leave the other one to charge and ready as needed. Just depends on whether the depots could accommodate the infrastructure and if its affordable for them.
Public transit could just run overhead wires for part of the common routes instead, would also reduce the price of the busses and be more ecological due to not needing all the funky elements
Or for long-distance trucks, where being able to just swap batteries could be a cost-effective idea
@@fish3977thing is we used to do that with trolley buses. But motor buses took over. Personally i completely agree eith the idea of a bus like that being brought about.
not really, its simpler to just have a few extra busses at the end stations. just take a free bus then.
@@fish3977 that would also mean meddlesome cables everywhere, not the most universal choice available
As an owner of a Nio ES6 in Beijing, I can offer more information on this:
1. The batteries are in fact monitored for degradation, and when it goes below a certain threshold (I think its 75%), batteries inside the holder are partially replaced. No owner expects a new battery after each swap, but they expect a battery that performs reasonably well. It is not about saving money, but mostly about convenience (as mentioned in the video, home charging is not available to all in dense cities) and flexibility (people do swap for bigger battery for longer trips).
2. Despite the fact that the battery holder is standardized. Many innovations still happen inside the battery holder, in the battery material level. In fact, a new semi-solid state 150 kwh battery option is introduced recently for renting/swapping.
3. If the owners of the cars choose to use the battery swapping. They either pay a monthly fee or a one-time fee per swap. This supposedly cover the long-term maintenance and operational cost. I have not done any detail calculation, but I think the viability really depends on how many cars will be sold.
4. If Nio goes out of business, there would be inconvenience to the owners, but not because of the battery swapping (you can still charge your car the conventional way), but because there will no more OTA updates, which are essential for improving the assisted driving algorithms inside the car, which is one of the key value propositions for all EV startups in China.
Don't think they will go out of business. They would probably get acquired
Thank you for your real life input. One things that’s not made clear in the video and your comment is the gain in purchase price. Batteries are worth between usd 14 and 20k today. Does the car price reflects the fact that batteries are mutualized?
@@sodune7590 When you purchase a car from Nio. You are given a choice to either "own" or "rent" the battery. If you choose to "rent" the battery, the battery price is deducted from the total purchase price, and you pay a monthly rent for the battery instead. I am using quotes here because you can still use the swapping network even if you "own" the battery. The fact that it is swappable (or mutualized as you have put it) does not affect the purchase price, because you will always have the ownership to a 75/100KW battery. It's just might not be the same physical battery if you choose to swap.
is the car cheaper due to no battery compared to other ev builders ?
@@HamilcarBarca2211 If you choose the option to rent the battery instead of owning it, then the upfront purchase cost would reduced by the cost of the battery, but I wouldn't say it's cheaper than other EV makers since price varies greatly between brands, and Nio is considered a premium brand.
Honestly I think this technology is best suited for electric busses where they have to be running continuously for hours on end, and where time saving is even more important. Plus being able to easily remove a defective battery and swap in a new one will save a lot of time and money for everyone.
It's already a proven technology for cars, is well known in China, and Scandanavia... it's not an idea, or a concept, people use it every day
The electric buses around here have wireless charging plates embedded in the street at several bus stops, definitely at the ones where they have to wait if they are ahead of the schedule, maybe at a lot more. That keeps them topped up during the day.
I don't know if the overnight charging is wireless as well, but it seems likely, since the buses are set up for that. Just parking them up overnight in their designated slots is a lot less work than switching out the batteries would be.
**ahem** trolleybus
Where I am (Canberra) we've got a few electric buses in service. Other cities might be different, but here we've been able to do it with usual overnight charging. Our buses, apparently, do an average of about 300km's a day and the buses we use can do around 400k's off a charge.
It's perfectly suited for all EVs, not just busses. But you'd need to standardize the battery technology, and none of the major players in the EV landscape want that to happen right now.
my primary concern about this is that I'm generally sceptical about the "everything as a service" future we're heading towards. this is, undoubtedly, more convenient but particularly when it comes to something like your main mode of transport, I worry that needing to rely on the continuation of a related service to continue using a product that you own outright doesn't offer people sufficient stability
Except, you don't have to. Swapping is optional. You can charge this car like any other EV.
I get your point, but you don't have to swap the battery, you can still just charge it like any other. So in case this stays in "concept phase" (tesla) you can figure out a deal with them and keep your current battery.
@@BlackTorrent Well, no, because when i pay for my gas at the station i can put it in whatever i want, because it's "mine" now
Remember the printer ink subscription service that disables the still full ink cartridge? Coming to an EV near you!
You may read Marx. He explains it quite well it's one of the final stages of capitalism 😂
I have said this for years, the advantages are not just that the batteries can be swapped in a couple of minutes but it means the batteries can be charged slowly, stored and looked after by the company owning the batteries meaning each battery will last allot longer and it future proofs electric vehicles, as new battery technology comes out it is so easy to update the cars
What about the fact that you swap out your brand new battery for an anonymous used one? And that owners with a lemon of a battery will be encouraged to play battery roulette until they get a good one, then stay away forever
@@aightm8you don’t own a new battery, if I understand it correctly you have to choose the battery as a service option when you buy the car, therefore you always switch battery’s when „charging“ and my guess is that the battery’s are monitored and would last longer because they will be charged slower degrading them slower. And even then at the next charge you’ll have a completely different battery.
exactly... the FAST parts makes the headlines, but what's underneath it's alot more
@@aightm8 They'll be paying a subscription for a service they aren't using if they stay away.
Part of the potential sustainability of the model depends on reliability, and that means not putting crap batteries on cars.
lemmon batteries are taken out@@aightm8
It’s too bad no one has thought of putting a swappable battery into a cell phone! Billion dollar idea there!!
For the Love of god, please tell me this is sarcasm.
We have swappable batteries in cordless power tools but every brand has its own batteries and they are not interchangeable.
@@YourLordMobiusCries in Nokia
That's the problem NO National or International Standard.
Also love the fact that it's a money grabbing subscription.
You can get adapters, they are mostly all 18 volts @@tinman1955
My parents own a renault EV which had a partnership with a similar company. They had easy to swap batteries which could be swapped by a carwash like building. Then the company went bankrupt and because the car was not very popular, there is almost no homebrew solutions to swapping the battery out by yourself
Good argument for standard fitment batteries across ranges and manufacturers there.
Can you still charge it at least?
@@ano_nym They can. What I am now wondering is, are they still locked into the old leasing model. I distinctly remember that for many years if you wanted to buy an EV from Renault, you had to lease the battery, whereas that is no longer the case with newer models.
@@M0UAW_IO83 and your rebuttal in 10 years time when batteries are half the size, 5 times as safe and have an operating lifetime longer than the car but can't be fit into a 10 year old 'standard' is what?
@@Nossieuk You misunderstand what a 'standard' is. The point is to make batteries compatible. If they can be smaller, you just fit them in a case that still fits the standard.
Robot: Park here, please.
Tom: (lifts hand nervously as car parks itself)
Robot (condescendingly, may I add): good boy!
Do not attempt to control the steering wheel. Resistance is futile.
Driver: "Computer, was I a good and faithful servant?"
Car: "No, human. You were the best."
Tom Scott knows not to mess with the robots.
@@vintagethrifter2114😂😆
One additional advantage of this approach I haven’t heard anyone mentioning is that, by changing the batteries at slower speeds, you are also increasing the longevity of the batteries, especially if you limit how much of the battery you actually fill to and stop discharging at
@robertstallard7836 Like, you are aware that if this were to be done then thered be some sort of agreed uppon standard. You dont want to be the one company whose cars *cant* use such a swap station, would you? You could just use the same small batteries in series for bigger vehicles, or just a few for smaller ones, to avoid issues with different sized items. Space might be an issue, but you certainly would need less batteries overall since it increases battery life
there are plenty of other issues, but the only real one you brought up is space
@@RepChris What do you mean "if this were to be done"? It's being done. Nio has thousands of battery swap stations already. There is no widely agreed upon standard.
@@styx85 I meant if it were to be done on a much larger scale, and outside of china. Im aware there is no widely agreed upon standard as of now, but the video does mention them being in negotiations and contracts with other companies in china to make such a standard.
@robertstallard7836 This is not wasteful OR inefficient, You seem to be forgetting this system is for otherwise normal EVs with regular charging ports as well, most of the time people would be driving and charging their cars as normal and only swapping the battery when they run low and don't have time for a regular charge. Think of it like a landscape service that owns a medium sized diesel tractor, most times to fill it up would be from a fuel can (i.e. plugged in) but once and a while when the tractor is on the trailer you might bring it to the fuel station and fill it from the pump to get it fully topped off (I.E. the battery swap).
In this case you only need a few dozen batteries of any type and since it's all underground fire suppression is easy since it's a robot facility, you simply flood the underground charging area with CO2 or other inert gas to suppress any detected fires. The battery charging area can be under the normal surface plug-in charging parking spaces.
@robertstallard7836 is USB-C "The People's Charger" as well?
For the people wondering , this swapping station is in the netherlands, i guess near Utrecht . It takes about 5 minutes to swap a battery and costs around 13 euro ( 15 dollars )
Thanks
Costs？
@@daybrake2 you dont have to swap battery every day. you only need it when you are traveling long range or you want quick charge.
This ones actually near The Hague, I happen to live 5 minutes from it.
It’s in the Harnaschpolder in Den Hoorn right next to the McDonalds, right off the A4 highway.
That’s an excess on top of the 51000 euros you need to buy the battery as a service option along with a 209 euro a month subscription fee that allows just 2 battery changes.
The amount of lying done by EV evangelists is absolutely absurd.
Facts and figures taken directly form NIO’s August 2023 European press release btw.
I'd love for this to be standardised, having similar battery sizes and formats would likely make recycling and repurposing used batteries so much easier too
So far not even the charging plug for the cars is harmonized throughout the different cars. Tesla still has got it's own type. And if you look at Smart phone: how many years did it take until Apple finaly replaced it's "lightning plug" by USB-C. I think more than ten and laws from the european community.
Not yet, battery tech is improving way too fast for there to be a standard.
And charging slowly improves battery longevity
@@owenernst7768 There are international standards for gasoline implemented as a result of negotiations. Standards for size, capacity, and form factor can be codified easily. Future innovation would evolve within an agreed framework.
I was told by an engineer when I, a non-engineer, proposed such a system, that it was impossible to design and implement. I was certain that he was wrong and he was. The only thing standing in the way of this type of solution is the vision that could lead to international negotiations that would produce a standard. All industries have standards - some US only, others international - in place that allow competition within well-engineered frameworks. It would take forever for the market as currently configured, to see the value in this approach.
This is the only way battery cars are going to work until battery technology evolves to allow truly quick charging.
Another theoretical advantage for a battery swap system is that you could smend 80% of your time with a short-range battery in your car (for me, this might be one good for 80km, but pick your own number) - your car gets more range per kWh when you're charging it conventionally because of the lower weight.
Then, however often per year that you need to do a longer journey without charging midway, you ask for the big chungus battery (they'll have a couple on hand for unplanned journeys at a premium, or you order ahead by a couple of days and save a bit on your subscription).
Obviously not something Nio necessarily do at the mo, but the concept allows for the "download more RAM" approach to range.
This is a great idea!
that’s a good idea yea
You had me at chungus
They do this in China. They have both short range (70/75 kwh)and long range (100kwh)battery. You pay different price for swapping them. They may provide other types of battery in the future. the best part is in China you can buy a short range battery and then rent a long range temporarily like you mentioned. but in Europe you cannot swap if you choose to buy battery due to legislation.
Aaaand with improved battery tech, they can put even more capacity into the same box size
My main concern is swapping to a subscription service where you don't own the device you need to operate your vehicle. The contract would have to be very convincing for me to want to sign up for a service like that and even then I'd have concerns about contributing to the expansion of rent economy. On the plus side, no more worries about paying for a new battery when the life of the battery inevitably needs replacing.
I don't see how this is any different to other subscriptions you completely rely on but never actually own - like MS 365, cloud storage, or even renting an apartment.
@@AbdulRahmanNoor all of which are also somewhat questionable in their own rights
@@AbdulRahmanNoorYou Will own nothing and you will be happy” - if that’s the future you wanna live in
You can pay to own the battery, that guy made a mistake. Do research about it.
@@AbdulRahmanNoor, I think wzdew's point is that he doesn't like those, either. Even if he uses them, it's grudgingly.
Personally, I think the solution is a slightly different model where there is no subscription; instead, you pay a fixed fee when the battery is swapped. You're _really_ paying for the service of swapping it, plus some for the electricity. Maybe there's economic hay to be made in discounting the fee based on how much charge your battery currently has, so you're only paying for the difference in charge (plus the swap fee). Maybe that is too small a cost difference to make a difference. Either way, though, you technically own whichever battery is in your car, and are trading that one for the new one on top of all the other things going on in the transaction.
No way! My late grandad had an idea similar to this three or four years ago (he didn't mention robots though, just the charging and swapping bit as a charging time solution)! I wasn't sure how it would be done when I heard his idea. I bet he'd be thrilled to know this is actually a thing!
It's been going on for along time, the Chinese had electric super car that did the same.
@@Momruoy-v5jand forklifts have done it since ancient times
Took us a century to rediscover battery swap technology. They used to do this in New York to run electric taxi services .
Used to*
Battery Swap tech has been used for many decades in electric service vehicles like the forklifts, pallet jacks, and other warehouse/industrial equipment that can't wait 12 hours to charge.
Renault rediscovered it 10 years ago. Identical system on the Renault Fluence EV.
The company running the battery swap systems went bankrupt, and this was from back in the day when fast charging didn't exist.
It was never forgotten. Since we have EVs in modern times, battery replacement is being considered. But so far nobody could make it economical.
@@juststeve5542 petrol and diesel prices are only going to go up. Finite resources will make new technologies a necessity.
There is a nice extra benefit to this which is that the station can charge some of the batteries when electricity is cheaper (as long as they have enough filled backups to fill the demand)
And you could probably also be selling power back to the grid when it's expensive from the same bank of batteries-as long as you know you have enough fully charged to meet auto demand, any of the extras that are just sitting around may as well make you money and make the grid less spikey
this is already how fast chargers work afaik.
They did mention this in the video
@@AlexWellbeloveyes, but it was in corporate speak unless I missed another mention (grid balancing and such as the guy mentioned) not that it's the reason why they are a business because that saving is important for their profit margin
AFAIK most commercial leccy plans don't have an "off peak" rate, and a company that's main business is charging and storing batteries, definitely isn't getting a plan with feed-in payback.
One of my friends a decade ago, got asked to go to Germany to work for 2 weeks as the company he worked for bought over another company that operated some kind of freight storage/consolidation operation out of the airport (I forget which city) and they needed workers to assist in the transitional period. He skyped me on the second day and explained he had never seen so many forklifts in one place before, huge operation. As the airport is a 24/7 operation they do not have time to wait for the forklift batteries to recharge (traditionally these were all lead acid batteries and not li-ion so fast charging isn't really an option) so instead they would drive it to a certain point at the airport where workers will literally swap the entire forklift battery out while you sit and have a tea / coffee break. Done in 15 minutes and now you have another full charge to continue for the remainder of your shift. This blew my mind back then, cool to see it being implemented in this video to the public.
A company I used to work for also does this, large forklifts/cherry pickers are actually designed with this type of operation in mind and set up to make swapping out batteries easy. For the ones we used at least, the batteries are also huge, like 3 feet tall and 4 feet wide, and weighed a couple hundred pounds, so whenever a forklift died on the warehouse floor before they could get to the battery station, we needed a second forklift to bring a battery over to it.
Swapping batteries in forklifts has been a thing for decades. I worked in a warehouse over 20 years ago in Canada and we swapped battery packs all the time. They were massive lead acid things that probably weighed 300+ pounds, but you could swap them in about 5 minutes at the swap station.
So...friend 2 weeks Germany work...
See how concise?
Worked in a warehouse 10 years ago and the battery swap station looked ten years old then; and it was for both 'tuggers' and forklifts
Lmao 15 minutes? We do that on less than 5 minutes ourselves
I think the most important point mentioned in the video is that this could be great for those without home charging. Many EV owners say to me "I never run out of charge because I charge at home and on long jouneys I need to take a break". What about the millions of people without driveways? Am I expected to drive for 40 minutes and then wait an hour to charge my car every time, wasting nearly 2.5 hours of my day? Doesn't seem very sustainable to me compared to 15 mins to drive somewhere and fill up wity fuel.
The problem with battery swap isn’t the tech, it’s the business model
Don't forget the possible insurance issues.
no its still with the tech, youd need a modular battery system that is compatible with as many brands as possible, that will be held well enough to not break in an accident, but come off easy enough to be a quick robot replacement. theres a LOT of engineering before this could possibly be viable.
Indeed. A company owning part of your car and asking you a subscription for it, is a bad idea no matter which way you look at it.
@@rnediscExcactly what I was thinking. I hate transportation as a service (apart drom public transport ofcourse). What would happen if the car is dammaged, or something in your car breaks? I bet you that Nio is really, really strict with you fixing the problem yourself.
Indeed. It's solving a perceived problem, not an actual one. Is it really an issue to fast charge for 20-30 minutes every 3 hours of driving for those rare occasions you need it on your vacation trips? On average: not really.
What I find to be really brilliant, is that for everyday use, you could use a smaller and lighter battery that can do perhaps 200 km on a charge, and then when you need to go on long trips, you swap to a bigger and heavier battery that can do 500 km on a charge.
That way, you save the weight when you don't really need it.
@whimseyOFCwell people do like to pay mire just for a little more comfort after all. It aint a gimmick if people are dumb enough to pay for it!
@whimseyOFC
What is the issue if the battery is worn and used? You just rent it. If the battery got problem, just return it and swapped another one. Nio never ask u to pay for the damage of the battery, right? You already paid for the rental fee. Maintenance of the battery is the task of Nio, not yours, right?
@whimseyOFC but there is no "your battery". You don't purchase the battery, you lease it and no single battery is truly yours. So it really doesn't matter if its used more and degrades more quickly for you.
not a great idea on seasonal travel uptick....
@whimseyOFC
How will you dent the battery, tell me? It embedded Inside the car securely. Are you trying to tell me you are going to purposely sabotage the battery?
It's different from driving and dent the external of the rented vehicle. I think you are mixing it all up.
This is a great idea that I had wondered why it wasn't more popular, but of course it faces challenges like compatibility/network effects, but also the fact that unlike gallons of gasoline not all charged lithium cells are equal:
My high school had battery swap stations for school issued laptops, back when laptops still had removable batteries.
The problem is the health of the batteries was not monitored, so swapping often meant you'd get a worn out battery that was at "100%" but may only power the laptop for a half hour.
These issues are solvable, but do add complexity and cost.
It will be important to monitor the health of these car batteries, trickle charge them to increase their lifespan, and remove them from service and replace them when they are beyond their prime.
on the other hand, it might be a plus too. hardly anybody is willnig to buy a used EV car because of battery quality. if you want to replace it, it often costs as mcuh as a new car, or at least non affordable. if you can swap your battery out easily, no worries. i think this system is the only way to make EV viable for non rich ppl. most can never afford a new car, or relatively new car ever in their life. 4 years old at best.
They clearly do all those things you mentioned. 73 million swaps performed, they have an idea what they are doing.
My college professor back in 2009 was a consultant on such a business plan. He used it in instruction about emerging technology & infrastructure. I was always surprised year-after-year why I hadn't heard about such a business. Nice to see it finally taking hold.
Common sense would dictate there's probably a good reason why you've never heard of this as a business...
Because you havent listened.
Battery swap is not at all new. It has been tried many times and failed commercially. It has been tried in scooters, cars and in trucks. It works fine and might be profitable one day by not quite yet.
I'm both fascinated by the tech and also uneasy with (especially physical) things as a service. I do think it could make battery use a lot more efficient and environmentally friendly though.
Where I live, many people use gas bottles to power things like portable heaters. When the gas bottle runs out, they don't refill it - they take it down to a local petrol station and pay to swap it out with a different, full bottle. Quicker, easier, no risk of spills. (Then the station will refill the old bottle in off hours and sell it again.) Paying to swap out an empty battery for a charged one seems no different from that. HOWEVER, it does rely on the fact that all gas bottles are standardised, so they're not beholden to any particular company. Electric battery swaps need to mature into a similar standardised form.
@@NalehwAnd a 5 year old gas container that was used a few hundred times is functionaly identical to new one. Car batteries get a little worse with every cycle.
@@HweolRidda That's a good point actually. That may make people with brand new batteries reluctant to join the system, and nobody would want to be responsible for catching & replacing old batteries. It would be challenging to design the system to avoid bad incentives.
@@Nalehw they could add a swap counter to the batteries, after however many charges is too much it can be sent to be recycled
@@fitmotheyap Why all the hassle? I would understand it as a subscription system. It doesn't matter how often you change battery, your subscripion fee would be calculated by distance driven, not by type of battery or swapping cycles. That would make sense to me, then it wouldn't matter, if you get a brand new battery or one with 80% capacity (aside from minor inconveniences about shorter travel distance).
I am really not a fan of subscriptions, but that would be a concept, that makes sense. However, since I am one who can handle other inconveniences, I would probably rather have my personal battery and deal with longer charging times. After all, most of my short range trips I do by bicycle anyway, I am used to taking longer for things, but also not needing to worry about any kind of fuel (but carbs).
This is the exact same principle that has been used for battery-powered pallet jacks and forklifts all day every day for decades in distribution centers across the world.
The only caveat with this point is: Warehouses/ports with these pallet jacks and forklifts are not changing the batteries an awful lot. Only double digits per day at most; not *hundreds* of times per day. It can be done, but the infrastructure to keep up with demand (even giving enough power to charge the batteries) will be quite large to have enough storage for the batteries while charging. Then you have to consider the safety of storing so many high-energy batteries so close to each other. Being stationary in a climate-controlled building is surely safer than a moving vehicle exposed (more) to the elements; but if one of them goes into thermal runaway, there goes the whole block.
I think the future is actually in standardising battery packs for vehicles in an open standard. Like, 10-15 kg battery packs you can take out by yourself, 1-2 for a moped and several for a car. That way all vehicles can use the same charging infrastructure and you reduce drm. They already exist for mopeds, all the eu needs to do is demand a standard from manufacturers that they will make mandatory in 5 years.
Full size battery swaps are inherently form factor limited to these types of cars. What if you want an electric mini? Electric motorcycles? Electric trucks or delivery trucks? Easily, seperate batteries could also make putting out electric car fires much safer since they can just joink out the boxes. Out of power on the side if the road? Flag down another car and swap a pack.
In 2013 I wrote my business studies dissertation for my automotive engineering degree on “Non OEM Compatible Batteries for EV” which was like printer cartridges but for cars. I researched the viability and it’d work if the OEMs license the battery software at a reasonable price.
Battery modules are heavier and more expensive. The industry is moving the opposite direction, a single monolithic battery that is also structural.
Battery swap is a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. Just plug it in like any other device.
You would probably need 20-30 for a car. Changing them would be an engineering headache, also the fact you'd have the public handling high voltage equipment
Swapping out ~30 individual 15 kg heavy packs would probably take longer than just plugging in and waiting 15 minutes. Just not worth it for cars.
Tesla Model Y has 771kg worth of batteries. It's probably faster to quick charge than it is to swap 80 battery packs.
Wow great! Nio nailed it!! Hope this technology gets to the US soon!
It will likely turn into national security concern if its from China, and in US, no one else can catch up Tesla charging network any time soon.
USA will ban
@@YoloRipThe US has a tendency to ban products that it cannot compete against. Famous one being Japanese home entertainment products in the 1980s
Motorbike companies (Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki and a couple of others) have agreed to use the same battery technology so that they are interchangeable. This means service stations will just have to have maybe 10 on charge and a motorbike can come in, swap it over and ride off again. I really hope this catches on as I think it's the simplest solution to a problem
I have seen that work in practice in Taiwan. They have like a charging shelf of bike batteries that were a bit smaller than car batteries and people ride up, swap and ride off. (I don't know the specifics of who can use or not, or how its paid for I was just a tourist, but still neat to see)
Seeing as a giant car battery is sub 30 mins on a fast charger, how long does it actually take for a smaller bike battery to fast charge?
@@TheMakomirocketlonger, cars typically (now) have built in battery cooling solutions, bike batteries are just the battery in a plastic case, at much lower voltages. Charging rates are also proportional to capacity, bigger battery packs can can charge faster than smaller ones.
@@TheMakomirocket Not a clue to be honest. As motorbikes aren't that common in the UK, if all say Tesco garages had 5 batteries constantly on charge, I doubt you would ever get one not full. I read about it in a bike magazine once but haven't chased up on it. I hope it's a thing because it would be so awesome just swapping a battery over
I like that they take grid load into consideration. Would be a great way to counter wasting green power (ie: braking windmills and turning of solar panels).
yes. the batteries can charge all day using green energy and be swapped into cars at rush hour times without huge spike in grid usage for the EVs. hadn't considered that.
more likely they're just charging as much as possible during the offpeak when its cheaper
@@ZestyLemonSauce that is why it's cheaper.
So I can speak about what they do in China. The solar panels around the battery swapper charge the batteries.
You could do this fairly easy with standard EV charging (and some policy changes and consumer opt-ins and what not)
Heck. You could use the massive number of EVs sitting connected to the grid at any given time as a distributed battery backup to pull power from in peak usage.
Probably requires too much regulation to ever get off the ground though
considering how much battery tech is progressing these days, i think a standardized swappable battery should be a bare requirement for EVs going to the future
Nope. It's not feasible. These battery stations would need to be open 24/7, and be at least double manned in the UK to meet Health and Safety requirements. All the batteries they stocked would need to be fully charged and ready to go. The cost of running a network of battery swapping joints would be massive. Battery swapping will be pointless once the charging infrastructure becomes fully developed, and charging times reduce to 15 minutes or so..... The average UK motorist commutes around 100 miles per week, with the average motorway trip being 70 to 80 miles. A typical 200 mile range EV will meet their needs 95% of the time. Tesla dropped the concept of battery swapping in 2013, in favour of their Supercharger network which can add 75 miles of range for every 5 minutes the car is hooked up to the charger. There is no way I'd want my battery removed, to be replaced with a battery I knew nothing about. It would also mean your 8 year battery warranty is void.....
*So, how long does the person behind has to wait?*
Let's say it takes you 10 min to swap the battery, plus another 10 minutes for the person waiting in line.
I guess nothing beats gasoline.
One issue with this method is it appears to only support a single vehicle at a time. If something fails, like the track that aligns the cars, then no one can "charge." At a traditional charging station, if one of the chargers fails, then they can use one of the many other chargers.
You can have up to three of these stations in the same amount of real estate space as it takes to set up charging stations. Not a big problem if you want to create a redundancy. However, more stations per area will also take care of that issue.
@@songyop These stations are expensive as hell. Way too expensive for redundancy.
That is true. However there is still the backup solution of charging this car "traditionally" by plugging it to one of the charging stations next to it.
If you have to you can always plug it in to charge if swap station is down just like the other 99% of EVs have to. NIO
@@huckleberryfinn6578 wrong they already have sites with two in one.
This way you don't need to worry about battery degradation and making expensive battery replacement after 5-10 year. And if the battery technology gets more advanced, and if the charger station detects that the battery reached its end of life, can just pull it out and "requests" disposal, and maybe they can introduce more advanced but still compatible replacement batteries.
If you lease a ev you don't have to worry about the battery anyways.....
Ill have zero involvement with these so terribly immefficient electric cars with communist batteries
You don't need to worry about battery replacement anyway, if you have your existing battery pack refurbished for a fraction of the cost of replacing it. Seems you didn't know about battery pack refurbishments..... Independent EV specialists in the UK are already offering this service..... And why on earth would you need to replace an EV battery after 5 years, when the warranty is 8 years?
Agreed. And if new battery tech becomes available, Nio will start using the new batteries as soon as practical.
The question would be, how much it would cost for battery change? Would they allow you to charge it at home, or it would be a proprietary charging thing making it that you have to change the battery so they can earn more to make it profitable. I really doubt manufacturers would just alow you to change battery when ever you are in a hurry
One thing that was not mentioned, you dont have to use a battery swap station, NIO cars can be charged just like a normal tesla or BYD, using normal charging stations. The battery swap just gives you more options.
The nio rep said you can plug it into the wall at home. Did you only listen to Tom?
I own a NIO ET5 and use fast chargers when I cant make it to a battery swap station.@@thebrowns5337
Really interesting, didnt know that. That in mind it feels like a good system.
But then you are just adding more demand for charging stations at that point
Countries that have not built enough charging infrastructure will suffer from demand being higher than supply, countries that have built enough and keep building charging station infrastructure will not feel demand strains. China has 65% of all the charging stations around the world, they are clearly electrifying at a faster rate than anyone else. 60% of global EV sales are in China.@@Wongseifu548
The best advantages are quite clear.
You don't have to do anything or get out of the car. You can chill out and be on your cell phone. Super Charger you have to get out of the car in winter to connect the part and if the heating is running at full power because you are cold as ass it will definitely take longer to charge.
Luxury is not having to do anything. So you have luxury with Nio.
Battery Leasing is what held back the Renault Zoe. It also means that you pay a cost regardless of how much or how little you actually use the battery. It's something we've learned from bitter experience that regular consumers absolutely won't tolerate and only businesses will go for it.
Seems you should have a model that lets you pay a small subscription, but then a specific fee for each swap
They give you the option of pay-per-swap, but it's so expensive that you may as well just charge.
agreed, I'm not paying for a subscription to use a battery. I'll gladly pay to replace it with a fully charged one every time I need a charge up, like I do with my ICE. But if I'm charging at home 90% of the time, I'm not paying a subscription on top of paying electric bills to charge at home. Just give me both options, charge at home or swap for a fee on the road. That fee should be more than the cost to charge the battery at home, but less than the cost of the equivalent gasoline tank fill up. Say, $25.
They have the option of doing both. Either you pay to lease the battery if you don't have the option of charging, or you don't and you just charge it yourself
No business relying on transport is going to use EVs. Unless they're getting absolutely _massive_ subsidies from the government.
I remember my dad talking about this back in 2006. Nice to see this concept actually coming to life now. Too bad he's no longer around to see it.
Sorry to hear about your dad.
Ideas never die especially when this is good idea
Toyota has a new engine making electric cars obsolete
I think its even older than that. I remember a french car manufacturer discussing this while I was still in university around 2000, but failing because all other car manufacturers refused to adopt the same battery modules. He refers to this problem in the video, because its still not solved
Sorry to heart about your dad, be well!
"A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in"
I suspect the big problem with standardising this is going to be around the different body types of lots of cars. The length of the wheelbase and the placement of batteries is very different across EVs so this would only be really viable if you could get multiple manufactures to all change to 1 standard which is never going to happen
And we all know that, at the end of the day, the US market will choose it's standard different from all the others. So this will REALLY become a problem with imported cars as well as building economies of scale with building one plant to aseemble vehicles for markets with different battery swap standards.
It might be more possible than you think. I was honestly shocked when the legacy OEMs signed up to use Tesla's NACS.
I mean look how standard AA batteries are. We can make global standards. Just gonna take a little while to work out the best one
@@sheabrown Using the same charging standard is one thing but all cars having the same wheelbase and battery placement is a whole different ball game. No company uses the same wheelbase across the rage of cars it makes and none are going to do that. You are never going to get the same wheelbase in a roadster and a SUV that would make no sense.
The front wheel ditch is adjustable, so the station can support different wheel bases within limits. The ET7 and ET5 have different wheel bases, yet they are both compatible.
Tom I have just realize why I have enjoyed you taking for all these years. You talk at exactly 120 bpm consistently. For every episode. This consistently has been comforting and entertaining. It’s a shame it may be coming to an end soon. But… thank you.
119 would be way more soothing.
It is harder than it looks - you have to make sure the battery is still secure in a way where it can't be punctured/break in an accident
Certainly things to watch out for while engineering, but I don't think this would be a hard thing to accomplish. I would assume, every battery comes in a sturdy shell. It would get secured with serious bolts, the power contacts being hidden away in a sealed spot. Such a system would even have big advantages, like for example, in case of a crash, if the underside doesn't get hit, the car could eject the battery. Or emergency personal could activate an ejection mechanism or the like. With cars it's the same as with phones, it would be a good idea to make batteries replacable / removable.
then I want automatic battery ejection in case of serious battery failure.
no more complete destruction of car. so good!
Exactly, I love the concept, but this is a Chinese manufacturer. Chinese EVs are notorious for catching fire, and this only adds another point of failure to the equation.
@@Gsoda35that would certainly be possible using similar technology to how an airbag is deployed. You could have a small charge that shears the connecting bolts and the pack would drop right out.
@@falxonPSN Okay, the battery has dropped out, now what do you do? You are now parked on top of a burning battery, and you can't just drive away, you no longer have a power source!
I love how the car doesnt trust you to back it in by yourself so it just does it
Sarcasm or serious? Don't agree with this statement, but I don't know if you said it as sarcasm.
It has to be correctly aligned with the pit and jack, so it makes sense that it's automated
the latter
@@kacperkonieczny7333
My 12 year old car would dream to do this for me 😂
Well you heard the man, they are popular in China...👀
This could be really important for the second hand EV market where current buyers are put off by the possibility that they may have to replace the expensive battery system in the near future. The security of knowing that your vehicle will always have a functional battery is important.
...until the company updates the stations to the newest model and leaves you hanging.
@@AllUpOnsthey have updated batteries several times. Only the frame matters, not the chemistry not battery capacity. You will always have the newest tech available.
I suggested this to my family ages ago, have various shapes of cars use identical batteries so say hatchbacks, saloons, estates etc. and have the stations remove them and place them into a charging cradle. So it only takes say 3 minutes instead of half an hour plus. The battery provider can swap out or repair batteries as needed. I think of it as an underground version of those towering automated car parks.
At the moment, it isn't quite popular enough. Lets say there are 12 battery packs, and takes 10hours to charge them from 20% - 100%. If more than 1 car arrives per hour, they will start to reuse non 100% battery packs. I wonder if there is a system that prevents swapping the existing battery with one that has less battery in it.
And just out of interest, how much does each battery pack cost to produce? And how many more additional battery packs per car would the manufacturer have to produce to make this setup functional? And what is the cost of building a swap station like this? And who ends up paying for it all?
@@PianoKwanMan Current battery packs nio is providing charges from 20 to 80 percent in 35-40 minutes. And the maths become 3-4 minutes, so the bottleneck will be actual swapping time(~5minutes). Ofc the strategy could be different off peak, and this is optimized when battery swap order prompts automatically as you start navigating to battery swap station, so nio gets notified 20 minutes beforehand.
@@zipeiliu2179 are all the batteries being charged at a high DC? I thought it was AC at these stations. All of them charging DC simultaneously would be a really big demand on the local and regional infrastructure
I battery-swap my Nio quite often. of course, I mainly charge at home overnight because that's always the cheapest way, but swapping is a great option to have when you're on a longer journey. it's also great to not be tied to one battery, with the inevitable concerns about battery degradation.
On a "longer" journey you aren't likely to have a swap station available, or you can only travel where they are and not where you would really want to go.
if you opt to buy the car with the battery can you get access to swapping via rental or something. I am not really interested in this as a main gimmick, but as a way to make the car last as long as possible
@@davidmccarthy6061 there are over 2,000 of them in China. i've had no problem finding them and that's why i use them rather than DC charging.
@@buzz86us2005 yes, you can swap even if you buy the battery,
on longer journey you can use regular chargers that Tesla and BYD use.@@davidmccarthy6061
This is what I had pictured in my head when I heard logistic companies wanting to use EV technology on Semi-Trucks. Though I then pondered about the practicality of having 1000's of these stations spread out to allow for long duration trips and swapping between higher / lower life batteries between different company's and fleets. It's great to see that this technology has already been developed and implemented in some capacity and I look forward to seeing this brought in for other industries.
How many gas stations are there?
I had the same two thoughts - seems like a direct comparison to currently existing gas stations is appropriate
@@zyeborm as many as there are atoms on the tip of a needle
Alternately, provide power from overhead lines. Like a train.
this makes a ton more sense for electric semis than for cars in the US where charging is more easily accessible than in china. I do think you'll see this kind of technology used on trucks in the not-so-distant future. In the future the truck will be mostly automated, drive itself along the highway, pull itself off into battery swap stations where it will also do its weigh station checks, and then drive back onto the road by itself. If it even has a human operator, they're just a passenger there to make sure the tires don't explode and to load/unload the vehicle at either end.
Makes sense. We do this with bikes all the time. Where I work we use 25 e-bikes on daily basis and that means constant battery swaps because leaving them on the charger takes too long and we don't have that much time to spare. And it solves the whole terrible experience of half the range with ten times the "fill up" time.
YES! we need lots of these really smart swapping stations but of cause for many different battery types. Great idea.
They should have just designed cars with AA batteries and let us swap them ourselves
[images a car with 20000 single-use AA batteries you need to buy 25k$ worth of replacements for and take a week to change every few hundred miles]
@@madmax404easily saved 40.000 euro. A Ioniq battery pack costs over 60.000 euro.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
😂😂😂😂😂
They already have. It is called Mercedes AA class
Electric forklifts in warehouses are charged in similar way. There's a bunch of batteries being charged constantly, when you're running low on power you just pop a freshly charged battery in and leave the empty one to charge. The concept isn't really new (hell, it's how AA batteries work). I just hope that "battery as a service" doesn't catch on. Maybe something similar, but instead of paying a subscription you pay each time you need a charge (you know, like with petrol) to have the battery replaced. You still own that battery (although which one you own changes), you can charge it at home if/when you can while also being able to pop in for a quick swap. Helps with recycling too I guess.
If you're having your battery constantly swapped out, you wouldn't want to own it. You could be given one that is damaged or defective. Let the charging company be responsible for the quality of the battery they provided, and the damaged it does, not you.
I feel like one of the biggest positives of this model would be that assuming they remove/repair batteries that degrade you don't have to worry about the maintenance/failure of your battery totaling your car/being on you. As long as there was also an option to buy a battery I don't see a problem with this as an option assuming it can be made viable as a business.
In an ideal world they would also allow battery owners to swap (maybe for a different fee), but that would open the can of worms where there's a dispute that the customer or the company got a "worse" battery in the exchange.
Wouldn't want this to be the only option, but don't mind it existing (I can see it making a ton of sense for someone who drives a bunch for business)
@@charliemacdonald9620 good point. I just don't want this to become a subscription. I'm ok with paying each time I would actually need a battery swap.
Amazing!
And just to be clear... NIO cars CAN fast charge like any regular car too, and in chine you can upgrade the battery (75kw to 100kw)for just 1 day (or more) for a very small fee and extend the range.
That's a cool idea too.
I read NIO as NO and was about to throw hands. Carry on, good sir
hehehe@@richardmillhousenixon
With the very average max speed of 125 kW. It's not bad, but it's also not 250 kW that most Teslas can take or more than 250kW that in 800V architecture cars.
@@darekmistrz4364 Most *new* Teslas. Get one three years old or with a smaller battery and you won't be seeing that charge rate.
Nio will become the biggest EV company in the world .
Way ahead of the competition.
Nice to see someone finally putting the work in and bringing this technology to market. Another upside of this beyond the convenience factor is that batteries wear down quicker than anything else on an EV so you can potentially buy a new battery if you aren't subscribed to the service and have that machine install it for you and safely store the old one for recycling. Or if you regularly use the service you don't have to worry about the battery wearing down over its lifetime because the machine tracks that for you and presumably doesn't install batteries worn down too far.
The getting stuck with a bad battery is precisely what I'm afraid of with this technology. Also, the exact point at which a battery becomes unsatisfactory is a gray area. The company may argue that a battery degraded to 75% of its capacity is good enough while the customer will disagree.
@@TheEgg185bad battery are removed from nio charging stations sunny😝🤪
Especially, keeping the price of the car in the second hand market!
@@TheEgg185 They could use the worse batteries as a cheaper option, for people who don't need as much range.
I don't worry about my battery "wearing down" anyway, because it gets checked as part of the service. And when the time comes - in maybe 10 to 12 years - I'll have the battery pack refurbished at a fraction of the cost of replacing it......
3:20 In a "much more dense city" you don't need an electric car. You need good public transport.
Chargig at home absolutely destroys this in every way from convenience to time saved to cost. Most daily driving wont drain a battery to 0 and for that once a year long trip you can just deal with a 20 minute quick charge. Seems like this would take even longer if there was a line of cars waiting to use it.
this actually IS what Im saying for multiple years now.. make a max of 3 types of standardised battery types, make standardised cars and frames for these, and automate the thing, with leased batteries (just as it is with leased PB gas bottles). Automated battery swaps, lowered instant power demand on charging stations, instant refills, cheaper battery production all possible with that..
A company called better place installed robotic battery swap stations in Iarael in 2008.
Good point, but why brands agree?
one thing im wondering: what happens if this company goes down? it feels like having this done under the guise of private corporations introduces a lot of issues if that corporation stops existing
What happens if Chinese communists decide you are no longer allowed service?
They still have a charging port. You'd just be stuck with your current battery.
@@Voyajer. In the next step, if the charging stations are widely available and accepted, they can simply make charging at home impossible, too (e.g. by making it illegal because it "destabilizes power network", "harms climate" or other such bs).
Which is a little bit why it's good for a more stable entity, such as your municipality, to run the transportation for you buuuuuut...
@@connection_okAs long as that stable entity does not revoke your permission to use transportation because you have not injected yourself with drugs. Unfortunately, they have already done it and we can be sure they will do it again. So there's a little problem with your government-sponsored transportation...
I think this is one of those ideas that seems good on paper, but won't really pan out.
Frankly, it's too marginal a market. I take 2-3 road trips a year. I use charging infrastructure -- you guessed it-- 2-3 times per year. So already you're limiting yourself to the times and geographies across which people are travelling. In the US, that's a LOT of ground to cover, and it means you have to have a LOT of extra batteries laying around doing nothing. Add to that the fact that I have yet to balk at taking a 20-30 minute break every 3 or so hours on these road trips and the net result is that a swappable battery just isn't worth the massive costs involved for your average commuter/road tripper.
china is about the same size as the lower 48.... you only need 5% extra batteries, and those batteries are use to balance the grid, so they aren't 'laying around doing nothing'. Further, the reduced strain on individual battery packs makes all the batteries last longer. This isn't just about a road trip; its for re-energizing at speed, especially is access to a 110 or 220 v charger is impossible.
35 million battery swaps made by customers.
@@ll-tb2tg They don't have it across all of china. Only the "rich parts"
Yes, but YOU have a driveway with a home charger. In Europe and the world in general there's less land and we are going towards 10 billion inhabitants so people will more and more in highrise and appartements. And those people will still want a car.
I read the title as “a robber just swapped my electric car’s battery” the dyslexia goes hard
must've been a very nice robber
This battery swap service definitely a plus especially comparing to the raising issue for Hyundai’s EV costing 50k just to replace the battery.
it needs time to mature.
Reading Dutch on that station gave me whiplash. I had no idea they had these things in The Netherlands.
Haha same reaction too
Same; apparently in Zwolle according to other commenters?
How does this station handle muddy cars, or dripping wet? Or coverd in ice and snow?
It seems like a good idea in perfectly clean and dry conditions, but how does the station robotics hold up to real life?
Battery as a service seems one step closer to full control of our lives by corporations.
I mean, I already pay for gasoline as a service. As long as this battery-swap thing costs the same price or less I'm fine with it
@@NobleGas_54You pay a monthly fee for gas!?!? Sign me up!
@@NobleGas_54 you already pay for electricity for the battery, why does the corporation need to own even more and the people even less, how is that fine with you?
and the battery renting isnt cheap, someone said that after 6 years its more expensive then just buying it (and thats assuming they wont raise the subscription price)
@@faustinpippin9208 I mean like the guy said, if the battery swap makes the refueling even faster than gasoline and the total price per month comes out lower, I'm totally fine with it too
@@faustinpippin9208ppl would have called you crazy for using netflix and not owning dvds 20 years ago, and that's also corporations taking more control and owning more too but look at it today.
as long as it's affordable and convenient, the average consumer won't care
This is great for car drivers, but a game changer for truck drivers. A 15 minute "smoke break" for every truck driver every 3-4 hours. The batteries can be slow charged so they don't wear out in a year. This makes electric make sense. Every car has a 25-100km battery integrated, and they pay to exchange their long-haul battery. Quick, cheap, and easy. Just like gasoline. (except gas isn't cheap anymore)
In most regions electricity is cheaper (per kW/h) than gas. All we need to do is make electricity as convenient as gas.
IMHO the disadvantages outweigh the advantages for simple fast charging for consumers, and hydrogen beats BEV for heavy vehicles due to much higher energy density (not to mention the absurd amount of lithium required to electrify a significant percentage of long haul trucks). Even slow charging is already more convenient than gas for most residential use cases since plugging in at night is way easier than needing to make dedicated stops at fuel stations, even if it's more frequent. Hydrogen is as convenient as gas so long as it's in stock and battery swap represents exactly the same infrastructure challenge as hydrogen for large vehicles since you aren't going to want to wait around for ages slow charging at stops where no swap station exists (and major transport corridors represent a smaller challenge than everywhere to roll out a hydrogen network).
@@bosstowndynamics5488 I drive a large vehicle professionally, ours use CNG, has a higher energy density/volume when stored at consumer temps. CNG does not have a lot of oomph.
My ideal fuel is GMO-algae-biodiesel. Carbon neutral, can be bootstrapped to existing infrastructure. (nobody has to buy a new vehicle)
Hydrogen also has really substantial storage hurdles that really haven't been sorted.
NIO is onto something. Battery replacement is a huge problem for most EVs that don't have this battery swap technology. To put something into perspective, to replace the battery of Ioniq 5 cost $60k+ which is more than the cost of the EV if you buy it brand new. We need government to step in and require all EV makers to make battery swapping easy and cheap, otherwise we'll have a crap load of EVs due to defective/damage battery write off as total loss even though the body is completely fine.
The opportunity to charge the batteries slower is a nice tangential benefit; it could extend the life of the batteries compared to always fast-charging.
Ngl despite being a non-advert, this definitely felt like the interviewees were making it one.
They work for nio and are semi professional spokespeople who were interviewed at a nio house with direct questions . What do you want them to do? Wear sweatpants and act like they are hanging in your basement?
This is really really interesting. There's been discussion for years about utilizing EV batteries as backup power for grids, especially as we shift to more renewables that don't necessarily produce peak power when we need it. There's always a lot of debate about how that's going to effect the EV owners. What if they thought there car would be fully charged and it's not when they need it? This seems like a way to make that more of a reality. Lots of batteries in one place. Fewer people for governments to negotiate with. There's a lot of potential systemic benefits to a model like this. Honestly, even just making it easier to swap batteries so the rest of the car is usable longer is a big thing.
I think this type of system might work well for places that want to use battery powered busses. The current issue is the need to charge those huge batteries fast to have most of the fleet running on time, swapping the batteries could save money on replacements due to wear from fast charging while also making it faster to get a buss going again.
In Taiwan there's a scooter company called Gogoro that has the same model (except you swap the batteries yourself). They seem really successful here so it's good to see another example of this technology working
Can anyone remind me how many days left till tom's scott weekly episode?
I feel the dread of not having weekly tom in my life creeping in
There are between 1 and 2 million gas pumps in the US. Since EVs and ICE vehicles have similar ranges per charge/tankful, it is safe to assume we would need a similar number of battery swap stalls as we have gas pumps (if the swap can be done as fast as a tank fill up). But, if the swap takes longer or if the battery swapping robots experience more down time than the typical gas pump or if swap stations sometimes do not have inventory, then we will need even more swap stations.
Aside from swapping battery packs, the cars are capable of recharging at home or at a charging station. So, no. You wouldn't need to build as many of these stations as there are gas stations.
I think the main benefit of these things is just the easy servicing and swapping of batteries. For most EV situations thought, this is more of a show trick than anything
It seems like a good option for high use vehicles and long distance travel, but seems like most EV owners in the US like having a slow charge overnight at home, and having a vehicle that's always charged.
Tesla had a demo version of this too, mainly to get the federal funds that came along with it, but it never took off because they only built one right next to a supercharger station.
I can see one huge benefit that might be more important than the time savings
It removes the issue of batteries getting tired as they age meaning buying a second hand electric car without needing to also pay for a brand new battery
meaning it might actually make it feasible with current battery tech to allow less well off familys and people to get electric cars, which is going to be important especially in the UK with the petrol car ban coming up
@@randomcow505 Exactly, having an easy replacable battery can triple the cars life. It is enormously expensive to replace the battery in most EV's so when the battery is bad usually they scrap the whole car
With a good network of stations and availability to more than one brand of cars (like a standardized type of battery) you can make EVs with smaller batteries and therefor much less heavy than nowadays cars. Also, batteries don't have any need to provide a range of 500+ kilometers as there is a swapping station within close range at any time and can be much cheaper than current ones.
Also, EVs are keeping their value when sold as second hand cars, you won't be left with a worn out battery but always can get a fresh one at the swapping station. So the market for EVs will be the same as for cars with conventional motors. All in all, I think this is a good step forwards to get to a point where there is no longer need for classic fuel for cars.
The tech is cool, the idea of a battery subscription is kinda worrying, personally, but there's something else here that I think is even more important.
This is showing how parts can be made easily replaceable to the point where you'd probably be able to do a battery swap in your garage in a matter of hours. With cars getting more complex and locked down, it's encouraging to see that simple, swappable parts can be made if the automaker cares to do it, and we'll still be able to repair our own cars, or at least have someone other than a dealer able to work on your machine.
You've said it all... IF automakers care to do it. 😅
I bet, especially with this being s rental service in essence, these battery packs are DRM-ed to the teeth.
You can choose to purchase the battery so it seems to me to just be More not less
Cars aren't actually getting more complex. They're just getting purposely harder to service and repair. There's a big difference.
An electric vehicle is a lot more simple and straightforward than an ICE car. However, there has been a decade of soft locking hardware behind us preventing just swapping around parts
looks good, solves the non off st parking issue and i like the units can charge the batteries at low peak times. good luck NIO
Too bad inherently it would cost more then building a bunch of charging stations
I've always felt the future of EVs lies in swappable batteries and when i heard about this company from a news report in June 2022, i knew they had the right approach. Just hope they build many more of these swapping stations, esp in the UK, and get those batteries standardised amongst all EV manufacturers. They'll replace all those silly charging stations.
I think this is what the trucking industry needs a couple weeks ago I read an article about EV trucks not being viable due to insane charging times... I think this is a good step to a possoble solution
The Tesla Semi charges up in 30 minutes and have a 500 mile range with a full load.
Other trucks may need swapping, but it's not that easy either. A large truck has a large battery too, up to 5 tons, that's not easy to move around, and I'm not sure you can even make it removable.
@@andrasbiro3007 Trains solve most of long distance trucking problems. Shame that Europe has such bad international rail network
@@andrasbiro3007yeah no, anything with Tesla is made up numbers.
Tesla semi? Link or it doesnt exist.
@@darksideblues135 Link to what? Ordering page? Charging specification? Wikipedia article?
They did this like 10 years ago in Denmark, I believe it was Clever. I remember the Renault Fluence was one of the cars. It didn't really take off back then, and now all the replacement stations have been replaced.
I'm guessing it failed because people just charge at home, right? That's the obvious problem I see.
Now that Nio has built over 2200 swap stations and I’m willing to bet it is taking off..
@@AllUpOns 10 years ago things were quite different, especially the ranges. I don't think that Renault got over 100 km on a charge.
@DDGGVVMM well yes, but Denmark is rather small, and they had enough to cover the entire country.
I tried swapping in Rotterdam Netherlands last month and I was totally blown away by the ease, speed and quality of the process. Battery swap is the future I have no doubt !!
It's not the future, it's the past. As in it's been tried several times by different manufacturers and they always fail. The issue is people think of it as a technical problem. It isn't. The technology is solved. The problem is the business case, and they're just isn't one for the average individual consumer. The only place this might make any sense is for large fleets. But for individuals, fast charging is dramatically cheaper, and almost as convenient.
@@Green__one No its not the same or convenient as battery swapping.
This really is the direction that EV manufacturers should be looking toward. Not necessarily to have all or even some of your charging needs be served in this way, but to design their EVs in such a way that swapping the batteries becomes a trivial thing so that you can pay a modest sum, hand over the existing battery as a core rebate, and then drive off with a fresh battery that will serve you for several more years at peak capacity. This does, however, require that the EV company has either their own lithium or other battery chemistry recycling facility to handle the spent cells, or they will need to have a very close working relationship with a company that does have those facilities so they can recoup some money by recycling the spent cells.
Tesla demonstrated a system like this years ago, but it didn't go anywhere and they seemingly never mentioned it again. I imagine the difficulty is in comparing this large piece of above and below ground infrastructure to the ever-improving fast charging capabilities made it a lot less viable of an option for the broad stretches of American roads.
It adds an incredible amount of complexity, but more importantly, you need about three times as many batteries in circulation. Battery swapping also takes about as long as it takes to charge, or it only saves a handful of minutes over a full days drive.
The Tesla battery swap took as long as it takes a full gas tank to fill up. They ran them side by side to prove it. But I agree with the original poster that it too many batterys in circulation and was very expensive.
It is a shame as the S was designed for it, quick release coolant, bus and data lines. I think we'll have to see it in the future since we are seeing waits for charging stations now.
@@timwildauer5063you need 5-10% more batteries. Please stop lying, fanboy.
Tesla Motors never intended for it to be a real system-they've built it to spec to please the subsidy giving commission, they got the moneyz and of course abandoned the project...
"Subscribe to your car" is such a hellish phrase
it's just leasing and that have been around a very long time
Tom: Takes just 2 minutes!
proceeds to take 5 minutes
I love this idea. I have pitched it to friends in conversations numerous times. The big issue holding back electrics is the charging.
And yet when you own an EV, as I have for nearly nine years, charging has never been an issue. People talk about it as if they're driving 500 miles every day, which most are not.
@@IAmSoMuchBetterThanYou
It would probably be an issue if everyone owned an EV and charged them at more or less the same time (during the night, most probably). I know of quite a few places where that would strain the power grid which is close to breaking as it is (don't live in the US, by the way).
But other than that, I think it's the infrastructure that is lacking in many places. Especially in comparison with regular cars. That's probably what's holding back many people.
How did you solve for different batteries and different methods of swapping in your conversations?
@@Hotobu standards. There's standards for gas grades there should be for batteries as well.
@@IAmSoMuchBetterThanYou I live in an apartment and have no way to charge at home or at work. Our complex has hundreds of parking spots and it would cost millions to make them all ev capable. It's not a practical solution imo. Battery swaps or hydrogen make way more sense.
I honestly think this tech is really cool. It eliminates some of the charging problems _entirely_ (in return for creating a few new ones, like what do you do if the station has no compatible batteries stocked or charged? unlike merely having a compatible cable/port), and like they mentioned, with good collaboration with the power grid people it can even make things both cheaper and lessen the load on stuff. Not to mention that batteries lifetime should improve vastly by a combination of less stress during charging + the ability to keep them charged to the level batteries like being at. Way less battery waste too, as when a car is decommissioned the battery can just be taken out and sold to these stations to continue being used. And also more control on battery health, where this also serves as a great spot to always keep track of diagnostics on the batteries (the stats would help science/R&D too) and if it spots that one is becoming dangerously poor (either a fire hazard, or just holds too poor of a charge) then the centralized nature of things makes recovery & recycling efforts much easier.
...But at the same time my hackles raise at the mere thought of the concept of "battery as a service". Initially I was going all "ew no, if I got a new car with a new battery, then using this station will change my battery to a used one - a huge value loss for no good reason. And they can surely earn a lot of money diagnosing all batteries, swiping the fresh minty ones to sell 'as new', and ensure customers only ever get the less valuable ones". But then they used the buzzwords mentioned, and I realized their entire idea is even worse - their idea is that you are not meant to even own the battery yourself at all! If the market continues to develop in this direction, before you know it, the norm will be "air conditioning as a service", "self driving as a service", and "wheels as a service", and all the other "microservices" that automakers are currently hoping to get into becoming the norm.
So overall, I am *_very_* unsure what to feel about this tech. It is cool and have many advantages, both for consumers, environment, and the industry itself. But it is also anathema to the idea of ownership and not being a recurring profit entirely dependent on a soulless corporation whose best interest is your worst.
If this had happened 30 years ago, then by now we'd have standardised batteries that all companies support and you'd just pay to swap them out - like how (at least in my area) we can already go to literally any petrol station and pay to swap out an empty gas bottle for an identical full bottle, and then the station refills the bottles in their off hours to resell.
But with it happening today, every company wants its as-a-services and its exclusivity, so I'm worried too.
Can’t wait to have a life-as-a-service for my convenience! This new age of innovation really is something
There's a movie like that. There time is literally money, and you have limited amount of it. If your time runs out you die. Rich people have hundreds of years stored in vaults, poor people live day to day literally. I forgot the title unfortunately.
indeed, cool tech.. But battery as a service sound truly horrible. You'll own nothing and be happy dialed up to 10 here. Honestly, this should be a "free" battery swap, where you just pay for the charge of the "new" battery + a swap fee. Without any required subscription trash.
@@SanderEvers
Why would you get anything for free? Who would pay for the battery?
im about 99.9% sure this will not become a common thing in places where it snows yearly... i mean all the snow and ice would require the machine to include a washing station to clean all the salt used on the roads and the ice and snow build ups before doing the swap
im sure this works well in places where it just about never snows... but in Finland this would probably not make it...
They have these battery swap places in Norway, as I saw @kyleconner from outofspec reviews do a video on them about a year ago.
If it became a standard that multiple manufacturers could adopt it might be interesting. Could also see there being cars that had both a swappable battery, and then using extra space, had other battery banks for extended range that are chargeable normally.
4 companies have joined swapping since December. Nio has batteries from 75kwh to 100 kwh up to 150kwh. All the same frame size and work in all nio models ever produced.
Also, here’s how this works, as far as I can tell:
1. You park the car in front of the station, and press the brake pedal to tell it that you’re in position.
2. You tap a button on the touchscreen to begin the automatic parking sequence, and the car immediately takes over and parks itself in the battery swap bay.
3. You tap one more button on the screen once the car has parked, and the car then tells the station to begin the swap.
4. Multiple things now happen simultaneously below the car:
5. The floor underneath the car slides apart, opening up the space the robot needs to do its work.
6. The car is aligned perfectly with the opening in the floor using a combination of retractable stops and sideways rollers that move the car with millimeter accuracy.
7. A lift system raises up and lifts the car slightly off the ground.
8. The robot itself (a sturdy metal platform with four motorized socket wrenches on the sides) comes up and makes contact with the bottom of the car.
9. The motors begin unscrewing the battery module from the car body, and once it comes free, it locks the battery securely to the platform and takes it down into the floor.
10. The lift sets the car down and the floor closes up again while the robot makes the actual battery swap behind the scenes.
11. This part is pure speculation, but from what I can tell, the robot then slides over to the section of the station that is completely closed off from the outside. This area contains a bunch of metal shelves that the batteries are both stored and recharged on.
12. Once there, it lifts the battery up and slides it onto an empty shelf, where the battery is then connected to power and slowly recharged.
13. It then finds the nearest fully charged battery and slides it off the shelf and onto the platform.
14. The robot now lowers back down to sub-floor level, and it slides back over until it’s once again underneath the car.
15. The floor reopens, and the lift raises the car up again.
16. The robot re-emerges from the floor and brings the new battery up to the car.
17. Once the battery is aligned with the screw holes on the bottom of the car, the motorized wrenches go to work again, screwing in the new battery and ensuring that it won’t fall out.
18. Once the battery is secured, the robot drops back down into the floor, the floor closes back up, and the stops retract, allowing the driver to take control again and drive away.
And that’s it! Honestly, this is some of the coolest stuff I’ve ever seen!
I think one of the plusses to this idea that you didn't mention is battery performance, I've known a fair few people here in Scotland who have bought an EV then ditched it after going through winter as the battery will loose up to half it's range and the manufacturers won't do anything about it, so hot swapping the battery could lead to more EV retention in colder climbs where batteries are failing to deliver.
It's not the battery that is loosing range. Battery has exactly the same amount of energy available when cold vs when hot. It's inefficient heating that is implemented in most EVs that is causing "the range loss" in colder temperatures
That has nothing to do with the batteries themselves. Batteries only have a temporary loss of capacity from the cold. This is why if you leave a Tesla out in the cold you'll get in with it claiming 40% charged but it slowly goes up as you drive.
EVs just have range losses in the winter because of heating. Electric heating while being far more efficient than alternatives does have an added cost to an EV battery. On combustion cars you don't really see any effect as it uses the heat made by the engine to heat the cabin, that was free energy that in most other times is just dumped to the atmosphere. EVs don't have that advantage as they don't make as much waste heat so any heat must be deliberately made.
Battery swapping is the one thing that I was waiting for before I considered purchasing an electric car. I live in Canada where it gets to -30° and I don't trust the longevity of the Battery. Tesla batteries are like 10-20000$ to replace but if you can just swap a battery every time then that's perfect
It will come and then everyone will use electric. Even in Nuuk greenland, nvm iqaluit or whitehorse
As long as it's salt free and corrosion free from multiple winters.
Tesla actually did this initially then immediately back away
Already 5 years a ago I was thinking about this type of solution to quickly get a charge. Whats missing is some industry wide standardization. The biggest advantage in the long term: the cars will keep value and usability longer as the battery cannot degrade.
It just makes so much sense!
I have been saying for over 10 years that this concept is needed. When your propane tank is empty - you exchange it as they are standardized universal fit. When your TV remote batteries are dead - you exchange them as they are standardized universal fit.
Electric forklifts have been doing this for 30-40 years so a 3 shift warehouse or factory can keep working.
Additional benefits are all the batteries can be charged off-peak hours reducing load on the grid as well as reducing electricity rates. The batteries can be slow-charged which increases battery life reducing costs and decreasing replacement rates thus reducing societies level of demand for raw materials to replace batteries and reducing end-of-life batteries needing to be processed.
The batteries should be configured to he modular so a small economy car uses 1 battery, a mid size or luxury car can take 2-3 and a truck can take 3-4. A commercial vehicle could take 6, a transport truck could have some hooked to the bottom of the trailer all done with the same automated swap system.
I too have thought this is what is needed for years. I thing I would add is that because the battery isn’t owned by the car owner, the value of the used car is not as diminished due to a worn out battery. Remember the guy that burned his Tesla because a new battery was $22,000? Yikes!
You don't own a EV do you? Nio are very expensive, for the price of the car alone you can buy something from another manufacturer with a big enough battery to allow 3 to 4 hours of driving at highway speeds (130km/h) and then stop and charge. On top of that you have the leasing of the battery and the energy costs.
Daily driving you only charge at home in off-peak hours as it's cheaper. On the longer road trips you can stop for 30 minutes and the car is ready for another 3 to 4 hours of driving.
Leasing batteries is not new, Renault did it with the Zoe to help consumers get ease of mind that the battery would be replaced if anything happened. The leasing make it more expensive as the cars don't really need to get a battery replacement.
I have one with 200.000km and the battery is still the same and it's performing flawlessly.
This business model makes zero sense.
I think the main thing is the demand for battery swap is low as charging services 99% of people’s needs 99% of the time. In reference to your forklift example, commercial application may indeed end up being the actual use case of this, such as highway trucking.
As soon as i saw the tiltle i knew what it was about. Because i have assembled such a swap station on-site!
it's already a thing for electric mopeds in Taiwan, namely Gogoro. You swap your own battery though. Battery stations can be found around supermarkets. Apparently it is good for urban environment but restrictive for longer drive/ride.
Mopeds vs full blown car is a big difference
I learned the concept 12 years ago now it is being implemented!
You might have learned about it in the contect of the bankrupcy of the company Better Place, which had implented it.
This kind of thing is huge for green energy. Right now, because charging happens during the evening and peak usage periods, many gas turbines have to be spun up to meet demand. This makes electric cars carbon dependent. If they can charge during the day, then they can take advantage of excess solar, or they could begin charging when it’s windy and there’s spare capacity there.
Actually is the opposite. Electric cars charge at night when demand is at its lowest. Price is also at its lowest to encourage energy consumption and prevent power stations to have to turn off
@@Ignacio.Romero My state is switching to Time-of-use rates. Daytime 9am to 5pm is the cheapest because of solar energy. The evening 5 pm to 9pm is the most expensive because energy demand is the highest. Overnight 9pm -9am is the second highest. Maybe you live in a state with not too much sun?
20 years ago i assumed this is how every electric vehicle would be
I know what you mean I did too because this is the only thing that makes any sense everybody have to agree to one universal battery and then swap them out I'm just like you I thought that's the way it would be
Because maybe you knew this is the only way that the mass adoption they were talking about, and legislating for, could possibly work. But greed never listens to inconvenient truths.
I like the concept of battery swapping and will be even better if all EV car manufacturer agreed to the same standard so that any EV car can go to any battery swapping station, just like ICE car can go to any petrol station.
I've wondered for a long time why this hasn't been done. If the batteries are easy enough to replace, it should be possible to have it done manually too. It seems like the whole automated machine is a great idea, but I worry about how reliable it will be long term as I'm sure it requires a million safety sensors and perfect alignment.
The thing is that the problem with normal fast charging is overstated. I looked at buying a NIO here in Norway but the battery swap feature is not a significant advantage over a car that can charge fast like a Kia EV6 or a Tesla. The NIO car itself is worth a look though and if I buy it will be without the battery swap option.
The average EV battery weighs between 1,000pbs to 4,000lbs (454kg to 1,800kg) which would require a lot of equipment to move manually as well.
Not every country has a government pumping billions into the EV industry in order to destroy your competition... For China EV manufacturing is what commercial aircraft industry is for USA and Europe.
I was gonna say, although someone got there before me. Waaaay too heavy.
Probably because the idea is dead in the water. In a future where EVs take over the car market, every home and garage will simply include plugs for overnight charging. At that point, swapping batteries only provides a (questionable) benefit for long-range trips, and that's probably not enough of an advantage to overcome the downsides of cost, performance, complexity, safety, and infrastructure that hot-swapping would require.