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Tesla tried this. The issue of battery condition is too difficult. No one wants to swap out their brand new pack and chance getting a heavily degraded pack back

Tesla tried this. The issue of battery condition is too difficult. No one wants to swap out their brand new pack and chance getting a heavily degraded pack back. Or swap out a heavily degraded pack to be offered a new pack but with a $10k surcharge for the improved battery condition. In new electric cars the battery is a structural component so you can't really remove it to begin with.

csunbird 5y ago
The perfect solution would be to not own the battery packs, e.g. you buy the car without the battery and you swap the batteries that car manufacturer owns whenever you want to "recharge", for a fee.
ggm 5y ago
I realise the moment has passed but structurally integrated batteries aside, this was a huge misconception of the likely reality of battery swap at scale. Starting gate, sure you get lemon packs. It's not like gasoline isn't plagued by low grade fuels and water contamination (it shuts down airports) -but then you get regulatory standards and people normalise to acceptably efficient removal of bad battery packs from the swap scheme. And since you don't own the pack, the problem amortises over the rental costs. People broke the model with what-if games. It never got to critical mass. So it's basically VHS vs beta, for swappable vs integrated and swappable lost, on pretty specious grounds. Integrated is good because strength and weight. Swappable was good on speed. Swappable is alive and well in e-scooters and probably works for trucks. Battery swap did not advantage Tesla in the marketplace and possibly disadvantaged Tesla which had 2x range for most competitors. A viable battery swap economy ends range anxiety, at the density of swap shops. Tesla wouldn't have had a compelling story in swap.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  NIO is installing battery swap stations in Norway. See https://thedriven.io/2021/11/16/nio-installs-first-battery-swap-station-in-norway/ https://thedriven.io/2021/11/16/nio-installs-first-battery-s..., https://electriccarsreport.com/2021/09/nio-launches-nio-es8-and-opens-nio-house-in-norway/ https://electriccarsreport.com/2021/09/nio-launches-nio-es8-...
- caf 5y ago
  and probably works for trucks. Maybe for freight trains too, since you can build the battery into a battery tender carriage, and railways have 150+ years experience at swapping carriages on and off trains.
  - alexvoda 5y ago
    But electrifying the line is overall a superior solution. Battery powered trains are only feasable in niche situations where either: - the usage pattern does not justify the investment of electrification - the company owning the trains is not in control of the railway and does not have any leverage over the railway owner. - for some edge technical reason the line can not be electrified.
    - ggm 5y ago
      Shunting and industrial loco in complex factory sites. Forklifts, and possibly rubbish trucks which do frequent depot trips anyway as a function of their job
      - alexvoda 5y ago
        Great points. Those totally might be niches for batteries.
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  From memory the battery pack in a Tesla weighs on the order of 300kg. It's quite a heavy thing to change even if the structural and battery conditions went away.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    Tesla has offered this in the past: https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event No idea though how they thought they’d handle battery degradation.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    You're off by a factor of almost two. An 85KWh Tesla pack weighs in at 550 Kg. It's more than 7000 cells, so that's 350 Kg for the cells alone and then you still need to add all of the structure, interconnects, electronics and cooling.
- rsanders 5y ago
  Swapping in a multi-vendor world also implies standardization. It’s too early in this technology to standardize - that would stifle progress. Swap stations would also be far more expensive to build and manage inventory for, and would carry higher liability for whatever automated mechanism moved the thousand pound pack packs around when it e.g. went out of alignment and crushed somebody’s car frame.
  - herval 5y ago
    Yea, totally - I found this to be a lesser problem in cases like Tesla, where it's all proprietary anyway. You're correct that in a world of many standards, it becomes an issue
clouddrover 5y ago
> Tesla tried this. NIO and Gogoro are doing it. 4 million swaps for NIO: https://www.carscoops.com/2021/09/nio-customers-have-performed-over-4-million-battery-swaps-with-their-evs/ https://www.carscoops.com/2021/09/nio-customers-have-perform... 200 million for Gogoro: https://www.gogoro.com/news/400k-gogoro-network-subscribers/ https://www.gogoro.com/news/400k-gogoro-network-subscribers/
- alexvoda 5y ago
  Yes, it can be done. But as everyone here said, there are trade-offs. Most companies judged the tradeoffs to not be worth it at this point. This might change in the future. I would say that they are right, because right now battery tech is advancing and standardisation would impose a cost to progress. NIO doing their thing is not standardisation. But it does show that it can be done and that is important. In the future we should definitely push to get to the point where EV battery swaps are routine.
alexvoda 5y ago
I believe the reason Tesla gave up is because it requires a lot more infrastructure (expensive) than superchargers and is mechanically hard to implement (though they did show working solutions). Also, it is a logistic pain since all battery exchange stations need a stock of batteries to charge, the size of which will depend on a lot of parameters. Also this requires standardising the battery. Turning it into a "API". Tesla is a very fast company and introduces changes constantly to their process, unlike others whould wait for the launch of a new model. Standardising on battery model is incompatible with the Tasla mindset. But a model like this is plausible. You would no longer care about the battery. You would no longer own the battery. If batteries were standardised, the infrastructure (not necessarily one company) would take care of the entire lifecycle of batteries (production, charging, maintenance, reuse, recycling). It could work but it is too early and technology is moving too fast.
tzs 5y ago
Tesla was trying to swap rechargeable packs, right? Another approach is to use non-rechargeable batteries. A few years ago a company demoed an EV using a non-rechargeable aluminum air battery with a range for something like 1000 miles. Aluminum air batteries are not rechargeable but can be recycled. With this approach when you do a swap you'd be getting a new fully charged battery, and your old battery would be recycled to recover the aluminum.
shkkmo 5y ago
Or it could have resulted in a commodification of battery condition that would have created markets that help eek out usefullness at the later stages of battery life. A $10k surcharge to swap to a much newer battery also means you could have a $10k discount on buying an EV then slowly pay to swap to higher and higher battery grades.

csunbird 5y ago

The perfect solution would be to not own the battery packs, e.g. you buy the car without the battery and you swap the batteries that car manufacturer owns whenever you want to "recharge", for a fee.

ggm 5y ago

I realise the moment has passed but structurally integrated batteries aside, this was a huge misconception of the likely reality of battery swap at scale. Starting gate, sure you get lemon packs. It's not like gasoline isn't plagued by low grade fuels and water contamination (it shuts down airports) -but then you get regulatory standards and people normalise to acceptably efficient removal of bad battery packs from the swap scheme. And since you don't own the pack, the problem amortises over the rental costs. People broke the model with what-if games. It never got to critical mass. So it's basically VHS vs beta, for swappable vs integrated and swappable lost, on pretty specious grounds. Integrated is good because strength and weight. Swappable was good on speed. Swappable is alive and well in e-scooters and probably works for trucks. Battery swap did not advantage Tesla in the marketplace and possibly disadvantaged Tesla which had 2x range for most competitors. A viable battery swap economy ends range anxiety, at the density of swap shops. Tesla wouldn't have had a compelling story in swap.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
NIO is installing battery swap stations in Norway. See https://thedriven.io/2021/11/16/nio-installs-first-battery-swap-station-in-norway/ https://thedriven.io/2021/11/16/nio-installs-first-battery-s..., https://electriccarsreport.com/2021/09/nio-launches-nio-es8-and-opens-nio-house-in-norway/ https://electriccarsreport.com/2021/09/nio-launches-nio-es8-...
caf 5y ago
and probably works for trucks. Maybe for freight trains too, since you can build the battery into a battery tender carriage, and railways have 150+ years experience at swapping carriages on and off trains.
- alexvoda 5y ago
  But electrifying the line is overall a superior solution. Battery powered trains are only feasable in niche situations where either: - the usage pattern does not justify the investment of electrification - the company owning the trains is not in control of the railway and does not have any leverage over the railway owner. - for some edge technical reason the line can not be electrified.
  - ggm 5y ago
    Shunting and industrial loco in complex factory sites. Forklifts, and possibly rubbish trucks which do frequent depot trips anyway as a function of their job
    - alexvoda 5y ago
      Great points. Those totally might be niches for batteries.
VBprogrammer 5y ago
From memory the battery pack in a Tesla weighs on the order of 300kg. It's quite a heavy thing to change even if the structural and battery conditions went away.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  Tesla has offered this in the past: https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event No idea though how they thought they’d handle battery degradation.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  You're off by a factor of almost two. An 85KWh Tesla pack weighs in at 550 Kg. It's more than 7000 cells, so that's 350 Kg for the cells alone and then you still need to add all of the structure, interconnects, electronics and cooling.
rsanders 5y ago
Swapping in a multi-vendor world also implies standardization. It’s too early in this technology to standardize - that would stifle progress. Swap stations would also be far more expensive to build and manage inventory for, and would carry higher liability for whatever automated mechanism moved the thousand pound pack packs around when it e.g. went out of alignment and crushed somebody’s car frame.
- herval 5y ago
  Yea, totally - I found this to be a lesser problem in cases like Tesla, where it's all proprietary anyway. You're correct that in a world of many standards, it becomes an issue

clouddrover 5y ago

> Tesla tried this. NIO and Gogoro are doing it. 4 million swaps for NIO: https://www.carscoops.com/2021/09/nio-customers-have-performed-over-4-million-battery-swaps-with-their-evs/ https://www.carscoops.com/2021/09/nio-customers-have-perform... 200 million for Gogoro: https://www.gogoro.com/news/400k-gogoro-network-subscribers/ https://www.gogoro.com/news/400k-gogoro-network-subscribers/

alexvoda 5y ago
Yes, it can be done. But as everyone here said, there are trade-offs. Most companies judged the tradeoffs to not be worth it at this point. This might change in the future. I would say that they are right, because right now battery tech is advancing and standardisation would impose a cost to progress. NIO doing their thing is not standardisation. But it does show that it can be done and that is important. In the future we should definitely push to get to the point where EV battery swaps are routine.

alexvoda 5y ago

I believe the reason Tesla gave up is because it requires a lot more infrastructure (expensive) than superchargers and is mechanically hard to implement (though they did show working solutions). Also, it is a logistic pain since all battery exchange stations need a stock of batteries to charge, the size of which will depend on a lot of parameters. Also this requires standardising the battery. Turning it into a "API". Tesla is a very fast company and introduces changes constantly to their process, unlike others whould wait for the launch of a new model. Standardising on battery model is incompatible with the Tasla mindset. But a model like this is plausible. You would no longer care about the battery. You would no longer own the battery. If batteries were standardised, the infrastructure (not necessarily one company) would take care of the entire lifecycle of batteries (production, charging, maintenance, reuse, recycling). It could work but it is too early and technology is moving too fast.

tzs 5y ago

Tesla was trying to swap rechargeable packs, right? Another approach is to use non-rechargeable batteries. A few years ago a company demoed an EV using a non-rechargeable aluminum air battery with a range for something like 1000 miles. Aluminum air batteries are not rechargeable but can be recycled. With this approach when you do a swap you'd be getting a new fully charged battery, and your old battery would be recycled to recover the aluminum.

shkkmo 5y ago

Or it could have resulted in a commodification of battery condition that would have created markets that help eek out usefullness at the later stages of battery life. A $10k surcharge to swap to a much newer battery also means you could have a $10k discount on buying an EV then slowly pay to swap to higher and higher battery grades.