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People keep saying this but it never gets more practical. Meanwhile, battery ranges get longer and recharging gets faster. I'm not convinced that swappable batt

People keep saying this but it never gets more practical. Meanwhile, battery ranges get longer and recharging gets faster. I'm not convinced that swappable batteries are the future of EVs at all.

Animats 6y ago
Where battery swapping was used, in forklifts and other indoor handling machinery, it seem to be on the way out. Newer forklifts tend to use lithium-ion batteries. "Lithium-ion forklift batteries can be opportunity charged in any setting, eliminating the need for time-consuming battery swaps" - Toyota. Swapping half-ton battery lead-acid battery packs was a headache. Unless you run 24/7, it's easier to just plug in the forklift when you're not using it. Battery swapping was a bet against battery energy density getting better. Better Place, the auto battery swap company, lost that bet. (They were 90% hype, 10% about actually doing it, but that's another issue.)
adrianN 6y ago
In addition, charge time is pretty much irrelevant in all applications except long distance road trips. The typical electric car uses 15-20kWh/100km. A car spends more than 20 hours a day parked and almost nobody travels more than 100km a day regularly. Charging at low single-digit kW as you can get from a normal socket is sufficient. For the rare trips that exceed normal battery capacity you can just rent a plug-in hybrid or deal with a small number of 45 minute breaks while you super-charge. Or take a train.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  In the western US (at least), although most car journeys are short and daily charging makes the most sense, not being able to use a single vehicle for longer journeys without enforced long-ish breaks currently acts as quite a deterrent to the all-electric car vision of the future. Currently, with gas/diesel vehicles, the same car can function more or less equally well for just about every type of journey, and it has long been a dominant habit of the US consumer to target what they perceive as their most demanding use. In the US, at least, one version that most demanding use is "driving for two days or more". I love trains, but train travel across the western half of the US is a joke, and isn't a lot better in the eastern half. When the train can take you, it's great - we used it to get from Santa Fe to Chicago last thanksgiving. But change the destination or origin just a little bit, and it becomes almost absurd to thiking about using it.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    I guess rural locations have a harder time. Maybe once we replaced all cars in cities with electrics we'll have something figured out that helps people who really need 800km of range.
    - woodandsteel 6y ago
      Agreed. With the rate that batteries are improving, in the not-too-distant future range will no longer be a problem for the vast majority of the public.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Only a tiny percentage of cars in the US are used in this manner though. You're talking about the long tail, and yes, the long tail will take longer to be served. More supercharger stations out there would go a long way though. You charge a lot during the duration of a simple rest stop and meal break.
yellowapple 6y ago
I feel like both would be useful, given that batteries typically have a limited lifetime and I'd rather not have to tear apart my car to replace them when the time comes.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  That's a huge difference in frequency though, once a week for a daily recharge vs once per decade. For the latter, it can take a few hours of labor and a lift to do the swap-out and it's not a meaningful difference, and ends up being cheaper overall than designing the whole battery system to be modular and easily removable for something that will only ever happen once. Plus, EV battery thermal management is getting better and better. Most EVs won't ever have their battery pack replaced, just like most ICEs don't ever have their motor/transmission/etc replaced. It doesn't make sense to optimize for ease of replacing those on an ICE and it similarly doesn't make sense to do so for a battery pack on an EV.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    > For the latter, it can take a few hours of labor and a lift to do the swap-out Only if it's a giant monolith. Smaller modules wouldn't have this issue, especially if accessible from, say, removable floor panels or somesuch. (Hell, you could have both - a giant monolith that you could replace all at once from below, or individual modules you could replace one-at-a-time from above) > for something that will only ever happen once. Will it, though? Like, battery technology will (hopefully) continue to improve, in which case there will always be a desire to upgrade to the latest-and-greatest, preferably without tacking on a bunch of labor costs (or else keep said costs to a minimum; user-swappable batteries make things easier for the repair shops, too). And damages could still happen, necessitating replacement (particularly partial replacement; it would suck to have to remove, replace/refurbish, and reinstall the entirety of the car's power storage just to fix one cell). > just like most ICEs don't ever have their motor/transmission/etc replaced. Usually because most people write them off and sell 'em to Pick N' Pull when that happens, not because internal combustion engines last forever. Personally, I'd prefer my cars to not be disposable.

People keep saying this but it never gets more practical. Meanwhile, battery ranges get longer and recharging gets faster. I'm not convinced that swappable batteries are the future of EVs at all.

Animats 6y ago

Where battery swapping was used, in forklifts and other indoor handling machinery, it seem to be on the way out. Newer forklifts tend to use lithium-ion batteries. "Lithium-ion forklift batteries can be opportunity charged in any setting, eliminating the need for time-consuming battery swaps" - Toyota. Swapping half-ton battery lead-acid battery packs was a headache. Unless you run 24/7, it's easier to just plug in the forklift when you're not using it. Battery swapping was a bet against battery energy density getting better. Better Place, the auto battery swap company, lost that bet. (They were 90% hype, 10% about actually doing it, but that's another issue.)

adrianN 6y ago

In addition, charge time is pretty much irrelevant in all applications except long distance road trips. The typical electric car uses 15-20kWh/100km. A car spends more than 20 hours a day parked and almost nobody travels more than 100km a day regularly. Charging at low single-digit kW as you can get from a normal socket is sufficient. For the rare trips that exceed normal battery capacity you can just rent a plug-in hybrid or deal with a small number of 45 minute breaks while you super-charge. Or take a train.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
In the western US (at least), although most car journeys are short and daily charging makes the most sense, not being able to use a single vehicle for longer journeys without enforced long-ish breaks currently acts as quite a deterrent to the all-electric car vision of the future. Currently, with gas/diesel vehicles, the same car can function more or less equally well for just about every type of journey, and it has long been a dominant habit of the US consumer to target what they perceive as their most demanding use. In the US, at least, one version that most demanding use is "driving for two days or more". I love trains, but train travel across the western half of the US is a joke, and isn't a lot better in the eastern half. When the train can take you, it's great - we used it to get from Santa Fe to Chicago last thanksgiving. But change the destination or origin just a little bit, and it becomes almost absurd to thiking about using it.
- adrianN 6y ago
  I guess rural locations have a harder time. Maybe once we replaced all cars in cities with electrics we'll have something figured out that helps people who really need 800km of range.
  - woodandsteel 6y ago
    Agreed. With the rate that batteries are improving, in the not-too-distant future range will no longer be a problem for the vast majority of the public.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Only a tiny percentage of cars in the US are used in this manner though. You're talking about the long tail, and yes, the long tail will take longer to be served. More supercharger stations out there would go a long way though. You charge a lot during the duration of a simple rest stop and meal break.

yellowapple 6y ago

I feel like both would be useful, given that batteries typically have a limited lifetime and I'd rather not have to tear apart my car to replace them when the time comes.

CydeWeys 6y ago
That's a huge difference in frequency though, once a week for a daily recharge vs once per decade. For the latter, it can take a few hours of labor and a lift to do the swap-out and it's not a meaningful difference, and ends up being cheaper overall than designing the whole battery system to be modular and easily removable for something that will only ever happen once. Plus, EV battery thermal management is getting better and better. Most EVs won't ever have their battery pack replaced, just like most ICEs don't ever have their motor/transmission/etc replaced. It doesn't make sense to optimize for ease of replacing those on an ICE and it similarly doesn't make sense to do so for a battery pack on an EV.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  > For the latter, it can take a few hours of labor and a lift to do the swap-out Only if it's a giant monolith. Smaller modules wouldn't have this issue, especially if accessible from, say, removable floor panels or somesuch. (Hell, you could have both - a giant monolith that you could replace all at once from below, or individual modules you could replace one-at-a-time from above) > for something that will only ever happen once. Will it, though? Like, battery technology will (hopefully) continue to improve, in which case there will always be a desire to upgrade to the latest-and-greatest, preferably without tacking on a bunch of labor costs (or else keep said costs to a minimum; user-swappable batteries make things easier for the repair shops, too). And damages could still happen, necessitating replacement (particularly partial replacement; it would suck to have to remove, replace/refurbish, and reinstall the entirety of the car's power storage just to fix one cell). > just like most ICEs don't ever have their motor/transmission/etc replaced. Usually because most people write them off and sell 'em to Pick N' Pull when that happens, not because internal combustion engines last forever. Personally, I'd prefer my cars to not be disposable.