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The technical problems might be easyish to solve, but I think the business/operational challenges will prove insurmountable: - Need to standardize on a small s

The technical problems might be easyish to solve, but I think the business/operational challenges will prove insurmountable: - Need to standardize on a small set of form factors across manufacturers - Limitations to vehicle designs - How to prevent owners from swapping a battery with 1000 cycles of wear for one with 10 cycles (and vice-versa) - Getting the cost down to be comparable with plain charging (it would never be cheaper—the batteries need to be charged either way) I think developments to fast charging will quickly negate any perceived benefit to battery swapping. Increases in capacity will also help, as will changes to expectations and habits for refueling (combining recharging with meals seems like an easy solution).

akersten 7y ago
It will be interesting to see what wins out. I'm personally not optimistic that battery technology will get much better from a charging perspective than it already is. But that would be fine in my book too, if we reduced that to ~5 minutes. Anything longer feels like a regression compared to fossil fuels. W/r/t standardization - yeah, mechanically there might be some interesting considerations like mounting points and common interfaces on the bottom of a car; but if the will is there, I'm sure there is a way. Bad battery swapping isn't hard to discourage - if you poison the well, your vehicle is banned from the subscription battery program and you get to charge at home. Many ways a car can be tracked by the battery swapping station - especially if you have to sign in with your Tesla account/use an app to initiate the swap).
- djrogers 7y ago
  > Anything longer feels like a regression compared to fossil fuels Not being able to fill up at home, or in the Target parking lot while I shop kinda sucks too - and those are much more common occurences than a 400 mile road trip. In reality, it's more of to a tradeoff than a regression...

akersten 7y ago

It will be interesting to see what wins out. I'm personally not optimistic that battery technology will get much better from a charging perspective than it already is. But that would be fine in my book too, if we reduced that to ~5 minutes. Anything longer feels like a regression compared to fossil fuels. W/r/t standardization - yeah, mechanically there might be some interesting considerations like mounting points and common interfaces on the bottom of a car; but if the will is there, I'm sure there is a way. Bad battery swapping isn't hard to discourage - if you poison the well, your vehicle is banned from the subscription battery program and you get to charge at home. Many ways a car can be tracked by the battery swapping station - especially if you have to sign in with your Tesla account/use an app to initiate the swap).

djrogers 7y ago
> Anything longer feels like a regression compared to fossil fuels Not being able to fill up at home, or in the Target parking lot while I shop kinda sucks too - and those are much more common occurences than a 400 mile road trip. In reality, it's more of to a tradeoff than a regression...