3 ms·

Battery swapping was an idea that made sense when battery tech wasn't as good and ranges weren't as great, but its window has passed. You might be thinking of B

by Zanni 6y ago

Battery swapping was an idea that made sense when battery tech wasn't as good and ranges weren't as great, but its window has passed. You might be thinking of Better Place, which actually launched a battery-swap station. It made sense (some) sense at the time to spend 5 minutes on a battery swap that would otherwise take 6 hours to charge for 111 miles of range. But today, right now, you can spend 20 minutes to get 174 miles of range at a supercharger.

anoncareer0212 6y ago
...which is also why it's a bit frustrating to see people saying "Oh, this is from the perspective of gas guzzlers!"...no it isn't. this is a huge win, we're not trying to replace all infrastructure overnight, but it lowers the inconvenience of a marginal EV greatly...174mi in 20 min is damn good, that's 4 of my loooong commutes
- zamfi 6y ago
  Only if they put in fast chargers, though. If they put in L2 (i.e., 8 hours for a full charge) chargers, it’s worse than useless.
JoshTriplett 6y ago
> But today, right now, you can spend 20 minutes to get 174 miles of range at a supercharger. That's still 20 minutes longer than it should take. And probably around 15 minutes longer than it takes to fill up with gas (which will give you twice the range). Speeding that up makes sense. (To be clear, I don't think it's reasonable to mandate swappable batteries, for instance; there's far too much innovation and potential innovation in battery technology for that. However, I think it's reasonable to experiment with that, and any other solution that will let it take less time to charge.)