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The economics completely change with fleet vehicles (aka, self driving taxis). Instead of taking an entire car out of commission for half an hour, you can just

The economics completely change with fleet vehicles (aka, self driving taxis). Instead of taking an entire car out of commission for half an hour, you can just replace the battery in 1 minute and keep the car on the road and earning money. Because both the car and battery swap station is owned by the same company, there's no arbitrage between trading an old, worn out battery and a new battery and fleet cars can be designed alongside the swap station to make the entire process entirely automated. But the big plus is that if you design a fleet system around battery swap, you can get away with puny batteries on the vehicles. A battery sufficient for 1 - 2 hours of city driving is optimal which saves both cost and weight for the vehicles. Instead of relying on expensive, power dense advanced Lithium batteries, you can shove cheap batteries into the thing, scatter the entire city with drive-thru swap stations and drive the cost of transportation way down.

tachyonbeam 10y ago
While that's true, I think you can also have taxis stop at charging stations more often when they aren't in use. Particularly if you have self-driving taxis, you're not bothering passengers by doing that. You could even have trucks with large batteries which act as mobile charging stations.
NotSammyHagar 10y ago
i strongly disagree with your thesis that a 1-2 hour long driving capacity sized-battery is optimal. If you have an electric car, being able to not constantly worry about whether you can drive home is far more important than the cost of recharging. its so cheap it almost doesn't matter, like $10 for an 85kwh tesla. not worrying about running out of power is the big value.
- shalmanese 10y ago
  Yes, for individually owned cars, range anxiety is a real thing. I'm talking about electric taxis which shuttle multiple people around on short trips throughout the day.

tachyonbeam 10y ago

While that's true, I think you can also have taxis stop at charging stations more often when they aren't in use. Particularly if you have self-driving taxis, you're not bothering passengers by doing that. You could even have trucks with large batteries which act as mobile charging stations.

NotSammyHagar 10y ago

i strongly disagree with your thesis that a 1-2 hour long driving capacity sized-battery is optimal. If you have an electric car, being able to not constantly worry about whether you can drive home is far more important than the cost of recharging. its so cheap it almost doesn't matter, like $10 for an 85kwh tesla. not worrying about running out of power is the big value.

shalmanese 10y ago
Yes, for individually owned cars, range anxiety is a real thing. I'm talking about electric taxis which shuttle multiple people around on short trips throughout the day.