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Dumb question I've been wondering for a while: why not standardize the batteries themselves, make them easy to swap, robotically from underneath maybe? Then ha

by donatj 9y ago

Dumb question I've been wondering for a while: why not standardize the batteries themselves, make them easy to swap, robotically from underneath maybe? Then have stations that switch out your battery like a propane tank rather than having to wait and recharge?

ohazi 9y ago
The difference in value between a "new" and "used" collection of cells is on the order of $10k. If you built a system that swapped your cells like this, you'd have to charge somewhere in the neighborhood of this amount -- the price of a powertrain overhaul, rather than the price of a charge -- in order to avoid instantly going bankrupt.
- Lramseyer 9y ago
  Not really. On a battery unit, the time and number of charge/discharge cycles [wear] can be measured and used to calculate the depreciation of the battery during the time it spent in any particular car. The user can then be billed on a swap. The benefits to this are that the cost of the battery is spread out over time for the customer. And since the customer is always effectively paying the difference in cost of the deposit on the battery, the battery in their car will never exceed the value of what they have paid already. This also makes it way easier to recycle batteries once they have reached end of life as well.
totalZero 9y ago
> “People don’t care about pack swap,” Musk said. “The superchargers are fast enough. Based on what we’re seeing here, it’s unlikely to be something that’s worth expanding in the future unless something changes.” http://fortune.com/2015/06/10/teslas-battery-swap-is-dead/ http://fortune.com/2015/06/10/teslas-battery-swap-is-dead/
jwatte 9y ago
Most electric car owners never charge other than at home, while they are sleeping. The "I need to take my car across the country on a whim" theory of car ownership isn't /actually/ a thing for most people, and "range anxiety" was engineered by the petroleum industry. Put an outlet at every parking spot for topping up while you work or shop in a more remote location, and you'll solve the problem for 95% of all urban cars. (If your commute is > 80 miles, you have a bigger problem!)
- totalZero 9y ago
  > "range anxiety" was engineered by the petroleum industry. Can you substantiate this claim? It seems a little Alex Jones-y without any evidence to support it. My understanding from reading the Wiki page is that this phrase popped up 20 years ago in a newspaper actually talking about a GM-made EV. Frankly the chicken-and-egg scenario between charging infrastructure buildout and EV takeup is a very well-known dynamic of the market for this technology. There was a time about ten years ago when many market participants were diving headfirst into EVs, but rapid-charging infrastructure was totally nonexistent and EVs didn't come anywhere close to the range of gas-powered cars, no matter how much you paid.
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    The auto industry has spent billions of dollars promoting a completely unrealistic image of motoring. When was the last time you saw a car commercial where someone was stuck in traffic on their commute? The median car journey in the US is just over 12 miles each way. 93% of households drive less than 100 miles on any given day. Current electric cars have more than enough range for the vast majority of users the vast majority of the time, but people have been trained by marketing to place excessive weight on abnormal journeys like road trips. The majority of households have more than one car, so it would make perfect sense for them to have one electric car for routine journeys and keep an ICE car for those rare longer journeys. People who do actually take the plunge and go electric consistently report that they charge much less often than they thought they would need to, especially away from home. If we had a realistic sense of how we actually use our cars, EVs could achieve >50% market penetration without any infrastructure at all.
    - prostoalex 9y ago
      > 93% of households drive less than 100 miles on any given day. But it’s not the same 93% of households driving short trips every single day, while 7% of households drive long-haul day in and day out. I might commute to work and back for less than 100 miles every single work day. But every weekend or so I might take a longer trip - short getaway to the beach, mountains, skiing resort, wine country, theme park, national park, relative out of town - you name it. What am I supposed to do for that weekend or two? Take an Uber to Yosemite? Show up at Avis/Hertz and request to be raped on prices for a hot holiday weekend?
csours 9y ago
Think about engineering tradeoffs: 1. Battery packs are structural - if you make them removable the car will be less rigid. 2. You have $X to spend. You can spend it on improving rechargeability or making batteries swappable. 10% of your customers will swap battery packs ever, and 1% regularly. 10% of your customers will benefit from faster quick-charging times
- hndamien 9y ago
  I think you mean 100%.
  - csours 9y ago
    Correct - way too late to edit.
fungi 9y ago
Gogoro is doing battery swapping in Taiwan with scooters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogoro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogoro
Simulacra 9y ago
A company called Better Place tried to do this with lots of investment capital, but they couldn't make it work.
- NotSammyHagar 9y ago
  better place cars were not very good and the range wasn't great either, apparently about 80 miles. Without a compelling car like a tesla, the ev 'revolution' wouldn't have gone as far as it has.
_ph_ 9y ago
Tesla was offering battery swaps for their Model S at the mid point between LA and SF, but the customers were not really interested in the service. After some hours of driving people want to take a break anyway, and with fast charging, that is sufficent to recharge the battery without taking any more time for the break. The big thing with electrical cars is, that they can be plugged in while parking. So every morning, you start off with the full range of the car, and often you can plug in at work too. Battery capacities keep growing, so you get more range awailable this way and fast chargers get faster, reducing the recharge times on the road. This progress shrinks the szenarios in which a battery swap would be needed.
prostoalex 9y ago
With high enough amperages and frequent enough charging points the long wait problem disappears. That’s the bet of Tesla’s Supercharger Network, and in their view on a road long trip you still stop to take a leak, get coffee, stretch a bit, so why not do all that with the car parked at a charging spot for 20-30 minutes. The charger can also accept a credit card or do in-app billing, like Tesla or Chargepoint do. Any shopping plaza or road stop can add chargers at fairly minimal (frequently taxpayer-subsidized) costs. Setting up a battery swap operation is just more difficult logistically - you have to dedicate real estate just to that, hire employees, train employees, manage employees, get compensated from car owners somehow, which would involve getting a cash register, running a cash register, etc.

by donatj 9y ago

ohazi 9y ago

The difference in value between a "new" and "used" collection of cells is on the order of $10k. If you built a system that swapped your cells like this, you'd have to charge somewhere in the neighborhood of this amount -- the price of a powertrain overhaul, rather than the price of a charge -- in order to avoid instantly going bankrupt.

Lramseyer 9y ago
Not really. On a battery unit, the time and number of charge/discharge cycles [wear] can be measured and used to calculate the depreciation of the battery during the time it spent in any particular car. The user can then be billed on a swap. The benefits to this are that the cost of the battery is spread out over time for the customer. And since the customer is always effectively paying the difference in cost of the deposit on the battery, the battery in their car will never exceed the value of what they have paid already. This also makes it way easier to recycle batteries once they have reached end of life as well.

totalZero 9y ago

> “People don’t care about pack swap,” Musk said. “The superchargers are fast enough. Based on what we’re seeing here, it’s unlikely to be something that’s worth expanding in the future unless something changes.” http://fortune.com/2015/06/10/teslas-battery-swap-is-dead/ http://fortune.com/2015/06/10/teslas-battery-swap-is-dead/

jwatte 9y ago

Most electric car owners never charge other than at home, while they are sleeping. The "I need to take my car across the country on a whim" theory of car ownership isn't /actually/ a thing for most people, and "range anxiety" was engineered by the petroleum industry. Put an outlet at every parking spot for topping up while you work or shop in a more remote location, and you'll solve the problem for 95% of all urban cars. (If your commute is > 80 miles, you have a bigger problem!)

totalZero 9y ago
> "range anxiety" was engineered by the petroleum industry. Can you substantiate this claim? It seems a little Alex Jones-y without any evidence to support it. My understanding from reading the Wiki page is that this phrase popped up 20 years ago in a newspaper actually talking about a GM-made EV. Frankly the chicken-and-egg scenario between charging infrastructure buildout and EV takeup is a very well-known dynamic of the market for this technology. There was a time about ten years ago when many market participants were diving headfirst into EVs, but rapid-charging infrastructure was totally nonexistent and EVs didn't come anywhere close to the range of gas-powered cars, no matter how much you paid.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  The auto industry has spent billions of dollars promoting a completely unrealistic image of motoring. When was the last time you saw a car commercial where someone was stuck in traffic on their commute? The median car journey in the US is just over 12 miles each way. 93% of households drive less than 100 miles on any given day. Current electric cars have more than enough range for the vast majority of users the vast majority of the time, but people have been trained by marketing to place excessive weight on abnormal journeys like road trips. The majority of households have more than one car, so it would make perfect sense for them to have one electric car for routine journeys and keep an ICE car for those rare longer journeys. People who do actually take the plunge and go electric consistently report that they charge much less often than they thought they would need to, especially away from home. If we had a realistic sense of how we actually use our cars, EVs could achieve >50% market penetration without any infrastructure at all.
  - prostoalex 9y ago
    > 93% of households drive less than 100 miles on any given day. But it’s not the same 93% of households driving short trips every single day, while 7% of households drive long-haul day in and day out. I might commute to work and back for less than 100 miles every single work day. But every weekend or so I might take a longer trip - short getaway to the beach, mountains, skiing resort, wine country, theme park, national park, relative out of town - you name it. What am I supposed to do for that weekend or two? Take an Uber to Yosemite? Show up at Avis/Hertz and request to be raped on prices for a hot holiday weekend?

csours 9y ago

Think about engineering tradeoffs: 1. Battery packs are structural - if you make them removable the car will be less rigid. 2. You have $X to spend. You can spend it on improving rechargeability or making batteries swappable. 10% of your customers will swap battery packs ever, and 1% regularly. 10% of your customers will benefit from faster quick-charging times

hndamien 9y ago
I think you mean 100%.
- csours 9y ago
  Correct - way too late to edit.

fungi 9y ago

Gogoro is doing battery swapping in Taiwan with scooters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogoro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogoro

Simulacra 9y ago

A company called Better Place tried to do this with lots of investment capital, but they couldn't make it work.

NotSammyHagar 9y ago
better place cars were not very good and the range wasn't great either, apparently about 80 miles. Without a compelling car like a tesla, the ev 'revolution' wouldn't have gone as far as it has.

_ph_ 9y ago

Tesla was offering battery swaps for their Model S at the mid point between LA and SF, but the customers were not really interested in the service. After some hours of driving people want to take a break anyway, and with fast charging, that is sufficent to recharge the battery without taking any more time for the break. The big thing with electrical cars is, that they can be plugged in while parking. So every morning, you start off with the full range of the car, and often you can plug in at work too. Battery capacities keep growing, so you get more range awailable this way and fast chargers get faster, reducing the recharge times on the road. This progress shrinks the szenarios in which a battery swap would be needed.

prostoalex 9y ago

With high enough amperages and frequent enough charging points the long wait problem disappears. That’s the bet of Tesla’s Supercharger Network, and in their view on a road long trip you still stop to take a leak, get coffee, stretch a bit, so why not do all that with the car parked at a charging spot for 20-30 minutes. The charger can also accept a credit card or do in-app billing, like Tesla or Chargepoint do. Any shopping plaza or road stop can add chargers at fairly minimal (frequently taxpayer-subsidized) costs. Setting up a battery swap operation is just more difficult logistically - you have to dedicate real estate just to that, hire employees, train employees, manage employees, get compensated from car owners somehow, which would involve getting a cash register, running a cash register, etc.