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From https://www.indiatoday.in/auto/latest-auto-news/story/morth-allows-the-sale-of-electric-vehicles-without-batteries-everything-you-need-to-know-1710727-2020

• paranoidrobot 6y ago
  While allowing competition for batteries is a good idea, I fear that it'll go the way of printer ink cartridges or the Keurig. Sure, technically you can get a battery from whomever you like for your car so long as it's compatible - but the Manufacturer has put DRM on the battery interface. All in the name of safety, you see - they don't want to see their cars catching fire on national news because of some shoddy batteries. However what it'll mean is that unless the battery maker is willing to fork out a large chunk of cash per battery to the car maker, the car maker won't certify it as compatible.
  • Zenst 6y ago
    > While allowing competition for batteries is a good idea, I fear that it'll go the way of printer ink cartridges or the Keurig. That came to mind also, though "OEMs to sell batteries separately or with subscription models" might just of covered that aspect. Batteries are already standard cell sizes, it's the packaging of those cells that makes things interesting. Now will they end up standardising that aspect across cars is the crux here. Certainly be interesting how this all pans out.
  • rishav_sharan 6y ago
    I think the point of this rule is that the manufacturer can't put a DRM on the car. India is trying to trying to set up electric cars like it has dealt on mobile devices - the sim is separately sold from the device and any sim from any company can be paired with any mobile phone.
    • pkaye 6y ago
      Where does it state that DRM is not permitted? They are just allowing the sale and registration without batteries.
    • dilse 6y ago
      Allowing does not mean mandate right?
    • paranoidrobot 6y ago
      I didn't see anything forbidding DRM. Even if DRM itself wasn't permitted, there's nothing stopping the manufacturers patenting some aspect of the battery system. At a guess, the connector would be the cheapest and easiest place to come up with some patentable novelty that doesn't actually matter. It could be physical OR an electronic interface of some kind. Then it's a case of "Well, yes, you can license the connector design... for $xxx per unit"
  • jankotek 6y ago
    DRM stuff does not really work outside US, especially in India. Most electric vehicles here are ebikes or small three wheel lorries. Many use recycled laptop batteries or even lead car batteries.
  • loceng 6y ago
    Indeed, there would likely come a time where bad actors, rent seekers in financial industrial complex, attempt to consolidate with purpose of increasing prices. It may not come to such a time of Tesla and their battery business reach a scale they're presently projected for; this scenario of course may also require attention for counterpoint mechanisms to sway potential abuse.
• phkahler 6y ago
  Unless they are going to dictate a lot of technical details this ignores a number of safety concerns. Electric vehicles typically design safety in at the vehicle level. There may be several high voltage capacitors in the system which can kill you in an instant if not properly discharged. Manufacturers also consider things like severed cables in an accident and plan for that when considering how to dissipate that charge in different scenarios. It will get sorted I'm sure, but there are often technical details that change when changes like this are made. They will even need to standardize connectors and possibly protocols to really do this well.
  • bluedays 6y ago
    In the Prius III (the only one I personally worked on) there is a safety plug which cuts the voltage. It's actually pretty simple once you start to understand how the system works.
• deepGem 6y ago
  Better place, An Israeli startup tried electric cars with battery swapping and failed miserably. So, decoupling battery from the car and allowing better competition in the battery space might fly. Car makers need not be bothered by the battery tech and can just focus on making good electric motors, since most of the car parts are from other vendors anyways. However, the decoupling might not be all that rosy as Musk has demonstrated that safety is best achieved with total vertical integration. Even Tesla tried battery swapping but gave up. This might work really well in 2 wheelers though. The existing bike manufacturers won't have to retool their factories by much to replace the engine with a motor and the batteries can be probably swapped in and out of the under seat space or something like that.
  • CarbyAu 6y ago
    I am inclined to agree with you. Removable batteries for cars has a LOT of bulk and weight to deal with. More a "service interval" like action rather than a daily event. Still handy to have but not nearly so much incentive in the market. But for motorbikes and scooters, maybe it could work. Especially small city scooter(125cc equivalent) work. Mind you, I am picturing a dystopian future whereby all the UberEats-like delivery scooter people keep getting their batteries stolen... edit: streamline
    • xenospn 6y ago
      Israel is full of electric bikes with removable batteries that you can bring in with you into the coffee shop and charge while you eat/drink. Also makes the bike less desirable for thieves (another big problem).
      • CarbyAu 6y ago
        Cool! And I think at least 30 minutes of my day is now going to be spent looking this up and seeing what models etc etc. Thank you.
    • deepGem 6y ago
      Theft is a major issue and all anti-theft measures will result in increased cost. One possible option is for the battery manufacturers to make the stolen batteries useless by short circuiting them or something like that. So there is total deterrence against theft.
• Zenst 6y ago
  It is very well thought out on many levels and will also enable electric car markers to enter the market without the burden costs in battery investment. That with competition for battery market thru choice, ability to repair/replace the batteries alone a big thing. So many things going for this, kudos to India, I hope other countries follow suit. >Also, by incentivizing vehicle designs with removable (and thus swappable) batteries, it makes taxis and other high demand use cases more practical without needing widespread fast charging infrastructure. That is a big plus as allows more control when batteries are topped up, so enables the ability to shift demand to off-peak usage and equally add grid storage/supply for grid stability thruout the day in a battery form factor that's competition driven price-wise. Lot's of potential here and the first step in that direction has been made.
  • taneq 6y ago
    > and equally add grid storage/supply for grid stability thruout the day in a battery form factor that's competition driven price-wise That's a really good point! As India builds more intermittent renewables, there's an opportunity for independent storage to help stabilize the power grid that battery rental suppliers would be well placed to take advantage of. (Assuming their regulations keep up with this idea... it's been so painful watching Australia's energy regulators fumble their way towards the concept that widespread grid-tied batteries might be a GOOD thing.)
• deleted 6y ago
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• bluedays 6y ago
  Let me tell you a story. I bought a Prius once because I thought I was clever and I was going to get a great car with great gas mileage. I read on the Internet that despite what everyone says about the battery that it is actually very rare for it to die. Well... turns out either that's not true or I got unlucky. My battery died. Not only did it die, but it died an hour and a half way from my house... So during the height of rush our in stop and go traffic my Prius, while it would still run, would take forever to accelerate. I wound up just driving home with my hazard lights on. When I finally made it home the first thing I did is look it up to see how much it would cost to replace the battery on my car. Well, turns out that when I was trying to replace it (was a few years ago) that the only people authorized to change it was the Toyota dealer. The Toyota dealer would only replace the entire battery though, and that battery was $3,000 to replace. There was no freakin way I was going to pay that. So after some Internet sleuthing and lots of research I discovered that it is actually possible to replace an individual module in the battery(The battery is actually wired in series of 18 modules). Granted, you would have to replace another one soon if the battery modules weren't balanced with each other. To balance the battery modules though you had to use some funky looking third party charger that wasn't really designed for it and in order to do it in a reasonable amount of time it would cost about $500 because you would have to buy multiple chargers, plus the cost of however many dead modules you had. Then you had to ensure that you could safely remove a 250lbs battery, without shocking yourself with 3,000 volts of electricity. I wound up just replacing the one cell to see how long it would take for the battery to give up on me. That saved my recharging the modules, but the rest of the work I had to do still. So $34 and 6 months later and I was still driving it. It was only when my wife actually didn't change the oil in the car that it wound up dying (a story for another day). Which leads me to my point. Toyota had engineered the car so that if there was any battery failure there was no ability for the user to really upgrade it without risking serious injury of death, unless you know... they spend two weeks reading about it and learnings in the ins and outs (which I did). Considering that the battery was ALREADY modular it would have cost them a tiny bit of effort to ensure that users could easily do this themselves. Not only that, but they insisted that the entire battery needed to be replaced because they were also too afraid to allow even their technicians to touch it. All of this could have been prevented if a law like the above existed. So yeah... I think this is a great idea.
• smdz 6y ago
  Why not just allow both and not be restrictive? And keep the choice to consumers and manufacturers. Why not just focus on safety standards of the vehicle and batteries Just imagine a country that did not allow you to buy a laptop with pre-fitted batteries. A heavy user like me would like a standardized external battery in that case, but many won't. The limitations on the design are huge. I am not arguing against swappable batteries. With electric cars being approx 2 times costlier in India, I do not think taxis would be a use-case for that. They are a business and they need to look at practical cost-benefit and they will not be the first ones to jump to electric. On top of that only 5-10% of India's population can afford to be generally environment friendly in an impactful way. And only 1 or max 2% can afford the huge upfront premium on electric cars. The Indian government needs to create less restrictive and less taxing policies towards electric but it creates policy quagmires, has a very small tax base and hence is tax-greedy overall.
  • renewiltord 6y ago
    Wait, the OP news source is a strict liberalization of policy. When you say "why not allow both" what is the thing that you believe is not allowed and why do you believe that it is not?