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I need ELI5: electric cars have very large and heavy batteries right? Why is it prohibitively difficult to replace them on demand? What if there were 2-3 batte

by _8j50 4y ago

I need ELI5: electric cars have very large and heavy batteries right? Why is it prohibitively difficult to replace them on demand? What if there were 2-3 batteries charging at home or hundreds at a "battery station", where you would park at a spot/drive-thru garage and have a hydraulic machine drop your old battery and lift in a new battery and the whole swap can take no longer than the time it takes to fill up a has car and you have less queues. Why is this not possible? If it takes an hour to charge a battery and a battery station has 200 charging at any given time, and it takes 2 minutes to swap a battery then 6 charging bays can replace batteries for 180 cars leaving 20 extra batteries for defects and other issues. Couldn't such a charging station be implemented on a similar lot and budget of constructing a medium size gas station (at least a dozen pumps and around 1 acre lot). A charging station that is twice as efficient with a 30min charge time can do 2 cars at most in one hour. You need 90 charging station to reach that efficiency even without considering the queues. I just don't get it. Governments around the world and spending trillions on this stuff so why is there no clear answer on this?

tacostakohashi 4y ago
We're talking about an industry that has failed to standardize on a single, interchangeable charging plug here. What do you think the chances of a single, interchangeable battery for such a "battery station" to remove, recharge, replace are? Or are you proposing such stations for each individual manufacturer, model, model year, etc?
- CryptoBanker 4y ago
  They haven’t standardized because they haven’t been given an incentive to standardize. I would argue that perhaps the incentives mentioned in the article could be given to companies instead to encourage them to standardize in plugs and batteries, but many people prefer to see financial incentives given to people instead of corporations
- meatmanek 4y ago
  The industry _has_ standardized, except for one hold-out (Tesla): https://youtu.be/sZOuz_laH9I?t=990 https://youtu.be/sZOuz_laH9I?t=990 > CCS is the established industry standard DC fast-charging connector, and every automaker selling cars for the US market is already using it, or, in the case of Nissan, has pledged to use it going forward. Except, oh right, except for... them [Tesla]. The charger situation is quite analogous to Lightning vs. USB-C for smartphones. USB-C is the industry standard, and there's one manufacturer still using a proprietary connector. And in both cases, the hold-out manufacturer provides an adapter cable so you can use the standard connector. (To your point about standardized batteries having approximately 0% chance of happening any time soon, I 100% agree.)
  - SeanLuke 4y ago
    There is an important point to make here though. I love me some Technology Connections, and am hardly a Tesla fan (in fact just bought a non-Tesla EV). But Tesla's connectors are unquestionably superior to the hideousness that is CCS. Tesla settled early on an elegant connector, and true to form, the rest of the auto industry settled on garbage, literally tacking DC pins onto the outside of a J-1772, much like the monstrosity that is the USB Micro B SS plug design.
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  Let's just ignore the total of end-user standardization like a charging plug. They can't even put the gas filler on the same side universally on all vehicles. They can't even make the way you access it universal. Ever seen a car from the 70s where it was hidden behind the license plate?
  - tacostakohashi 4y ago
    > Ever seen a car from the 70s where it was hidden behind the license plate? Yes, I have. Those are kind of cool, because it is equidistant from both sides.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > They can't even put the gas filler on the same side universally on all vehicles. The side is a a non-issue. The important part is that the hose connection is standard. Any ICE car I could possibly buy can be fueled at any gas station anywhere, the hose always works.
- _8j50 4y ago
  Governments can mandate this just like electrical outlets and emissions requirements.
lossolo 4y ago
They are already doing this in China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTXptUuKGrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTXptUuKGrc 20 seconds battery swap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q2ew50YVHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q2ew50YVHY NIO have 1000 stations and 10 million swaps already. More info: https://www.arenaev.com/nio_achieves_10_million_battery_swaps_and_opens_999_swap_stations-news-449.php https://www.arenaev.com/nio_achieves_10_million_battery_swap...
- _8j50 4y ago
  That's what I'm talking about. Biden's 300bn plan will essentially lock the US to charging stations, I wish someone can tell them about this.
mh8h 4y ago
With the current way of owning an EV, you own the battery. And because batteries degrade overtime, the health of the battery is a big component of the value of your car. Using a service like that means you'll get a random battery every time you swap. I guess that can change if you lease the battery separately.
- adrr 4y ago
  EVs will switch to LFP batteries that will have a life span of 300k miles with current technology and in 10 years will be at a million miles. Batteries will last longer than the cars.
- jacknews 4y ago
  Like with cooking gas cylinders? If you don't own it, as long it's certified good and won't blow your car up it doesn't really matter if it's well-worn, etc?
bombcar 4y ago
This could work for leased cars or fleet vehicles. I already don’t want to swap my propane tank for someone else’s rusted piece of crap so I have it filled. No way if want to swap my 20k battery for who knows what.
mabbo 4y ago
I think the problem is that you are thinking of things purely in terms of how gas stations and gas powered cars work. You need to step back and re-think. For almost all EV owners, a level 2 (240V 20amp) charger at home is all that's needed[0]. It charges slowly, but given the car sits for 12+ hours every night, it's more than enough. You get home, you plug in, you go eat dinner and go to bed. When it's time to go in the morning, you have a full charge. "Refilling" isn't a discrete event that takes place in a given place. You just plug in whenever you aren't driving. DC fast charging, which charges the car in an hour or less, that's a rare event. It's what you use when you're on a long trip somewhere that takes more than one charge of the battery. But most owners might do that a few times per year. So the problem you're trying to solve with this "swappable battery" solution is tiny. Imagine how much more the car will cost to support this complexity, and for what benefit? Saving a few hours per year? I won't pay the additional thousands of dollars for the "swappable battery" car, and I won't pay the cost of maintaining the swappable battery stations. It's just not worth it vs spending that time getting lunch. [0] My wife and I did the math on our own driving patterns and realized we could probably get away with a level ONE charger- literally a standard 120V extension cord - for the EV we're on a waiting list for.
- theli0nheart 4y ago
  This is a bit of a nitpick, but L2s don’t charge slowly. Ours gets us about 30 miles per hour, so we get fully charged after a normal day’s worth of driving in about 30 minutes.
  - elihu 4y ago
    It depends on your definition of "slow" and your use case. If you were on a road trip and had to stop for an hour per 30 miles at a charging station, it'd probably seem really slow. If you're plugging in after you get home from a short commute (the most common use case), then it's perfectly fine.
    - theli0nheart 4y ago
      For sure, but we’re talking in the context of a home charger here.
elihu 4y ago
Battery swap stations are an old idea, but it's really hard to actually pull it off. It requires that all the cars you service have the same battery pack, or that there are at most only a few kinds of battery pack to deal with. The packs have to be stored and charged, so you have the same electrical service requirements plus you need a place to store the batteries, and employees or robots to move them around. You need car owners to accept an ownership model where batteries are leased rather than owned. Modern EV batteries are almost always liquid cooled, so your removable battery will need some kind of fluid connection that can be disconnected and reconnected without dripping ethylene glycol or whatever on everything, and without getting air bubbles in the line. Some cars are moving towards structural batteries, which means the car is less sturdy without the battery installed. That might not be a problem if it's just sitting there. The alternative is to just do DC fast charging, which seems to be good enough for most uses. Personally I think the long-term solution here is to electrify sections of the major highways at regular intervals, so that cars can charge without stopping. Sweden has some pilot projects involving rails embedded in slots in the road surface. Overhead lines are another option (and they're cheaper), but if they're high enough for trucks to fit, then cars would have to have very tall pantographs to reach.
- _8j50 4y ago
  As a sibling commenter pointed out, NIO is already doing this with millions of swaps already in China. Instead of electrifying roads for cars, why not electrify them for rail cars and trains?
  - elihu 4y ago
    Converting trains over to electric is also well worth doing.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  > but it's really hard to actually pull it off. It requires that all the cars you service have the same battery pack, or that there are at most only a few kinds of battery pack to deal with. Precisely the kind of thing government regulation is for. Don't specify what is inside the battery pack, specify the form factor, connection points and attachment mechanisms. Leave the battery companies to figure out the rest.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
butwhywhyoh 4y ago
> I just don't get it. Governments around the world and spending trillions on this stuff so why is there no clear answer on this? Why would there need to be a "clear answer" on something that quite obviously wouldn't work? Everyone here has done a great job of explaining to you the complexity of your "simple" solution, but you don't seem to want to accept any of the explanations. You seem to think that your back-of-the-napkin calculation can just be magically turned into a major part of our transportation infrastructure. Cars aren't television remotes. The batteries in the cars aren't your standard AA battery. The situation is far more complicated than you're making it out to be.
- _8j50 4y ago
  Give me a break, what I have seen is someone showed me this is already being done in China. So anything you say is an excuse that is dangerously preventing climate change prevention efforts. I literally saw a video of NIO doing this and arguments like yours "cars aren't television remotes" "it's too hard" are bullshit. The interstate freeway project was hard yet it was done with trillions of dollars spent because it had to. Since china is doing it the only thing hard is that it costs more but our tax dollars are set aside to subsidize this shit but home owning rich people can make electric cars work for them with chargers so everyone better find extra time and houses fast else you're shit out of luck. Governments can force car companies to use stanrdized connections, every car has plenty of government regulated things like this. I said ELI5 so you can explain to me why my back of napkin calculation does not work when seemingly endless subsidies and cost that is passed down to consumers are in the works. NIO is already doing this without a $300B subsidy...oh and get this: selling batteries is more profitable for companies! One car is one battery but when battery stations also buy batteries that is more profit. Tesla literally sells batteries to power grids because of profit. "Who will spend tens of billions to do this" is the question and we have an answer now, but you don't seem to gey that it will be largely wasted because people will not buy electric cars if they have to wait in line every day to get a charge or filling up the charge can cause them to be late to places. An inconvenient solution is a dead solution, in a free market consumer satisfaction comes first.

by _8j50 4y ago

tacostakohashi 4y ago

We're talking about an industry that has failed to standardize on a single, interchangeable charging plug here. What do you think the chances of a single, interchangeable battery for such a "battery station" to remove, recharge, replace are? Or are you proposing such stations for each individual manufacturer, model, model year, etc?

CryptoBanker 4y ago
They haven’t standardized because they haven’t been given an incentive to standardize. I would argue that perhaps the incentives mentioned in the article could be given to companies instead to encourage them to standardize in plugs and batteries, but many people prefer to see financial incentives given to people instead of corporations
meatmanek 4y ago
The industry _has_ standardized, except for one hold-out (Tesla): https://youtu.be/sZOuz_laH9I?t=990 https://youtu.be/sZOuz_laH9I?t=990 > CCS is the established industry standard DC fast-charging connector, and every automaker selling cars for the US market is already using it, or, in the case of Nissan, has pledged to use it going forward. Except, oh right, except for... them [Tesla]. The charger situation is quite analogous to Lightning vs. USB-C for smartphones. USB-C is the industry standard, and there's one manufacturer still using a proprietary connector. And in both cases, the hold-out manufacturer provides an adapter cable so you can use the standard connector. (To your point about standardized batteries having approximately 0% chance of happening any time soon, I 100% agree.)
- SeanLuke 4y ago
  There is an important point to make here though. I love me some Technology Connections, and am hardly a Tesla fan (in fact just bought a non-Tesla EV). But Tesla's connectors are unquestionably superior to the hideousness that is CCS. Tesla settled early on an elegant connector, and true to form, the rest of the auto industry settled on garbage, literally tacking DC pins onto the outside of a J-1772, much like the monstrosity that is the USB Micro B SS plug design.
sidewndr46 4y ago
Let's just ignore the total of end-user standardization like a charging plug. They can't even put the gas filler on the same side universally on all vehicles. They can't even make the way you access it universal. Ever seen a car from the 70s where it was hidden behind the license plate?
- tacostakohashi 4y ago
  > Ever seen a car from the 70s where it was hidden behind the license plate? Yes, I have. Those are kind of cool, because it is equidistant from both sides.
- jjav 4y ago
  > They can't even put the gas filler on the same side universally on all vehicles. The side is a a non-issue. The important part is that the hose connection is standard. Any ICE car I could possibly buy can be fueled at any gas station anywhere, the hose always works.
_8j50 4y ago
Governments can mandate this just like electrical outlets and emissions requirements.

lossolo 4y ago

They are already doing this in China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTXptUuKGrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTXptUuKGrc 20 seconds battery swap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q2ew50YVHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q2ew50YVHY NIO have 1000 stations and 10 million swaps already. More info: https://www.arenaev.com/nio_achieves_10_million_battery_swaps_and_opens_999_swap_stations-news-449.php https://www.arenaev.com/nio_achieves_10_million_battery_swap...

_8j50 4y ago
That's what I'm talking about. Biden's 300bn plan will essentially lock the US to charging stations, I wish someone can tell them about this.

mh8h 4y ago

With the current way of owning an EV, you own the battery. And because batteries degrade overtime, the health of the battery is a big component of the value of your car. Using a service like that means you'll get a random battery every time you swap. I guess that can change if you lease the battery separately.

adrr 4y ago
EVs will switch to LFP batteries that will have a life span of 300k miles with current technology and in 10 years will be at a million miles. Batteries will last longer than the cars.
jacknews 4y ago
Like with cooking gas cylinders? If you don't own it, as long it's certified good and won't blow your car up it doesn't really matter if it's well-worn, etc?

bombcar 4y ago

This could work for leased cars or fleet vehicles. I already don’t want to swap my propane tank for someone else’s rusted piece of crap so I have it filled. No way if want to swap my 20k battery for who knows what.

mabbo 4y ago

I think the problem is that you are thinking of things purely in terms of how gas stations and gas powered cars work. You need to step back and re-think. For almost all EV owners, a level 2 (240V 20amp) charger at home is all that's needed[0]. It charges slowly, but given the car sits for 12+ hours every night, it's more than enough. You get home, you plug in, you go eat dinner and go to bed. When it's time to go in the morning, you have a full charge. "Refilling" isn't a discrete event that takes place in a given place. You just plug in whenever you aren't driving. DC fast charging, which charges the car in an hour or less, that's a rare event. It's what you use when you're on a long trip somewhere that takes more than one charge of the battery. But most owners might do that a few times per year. So the problem you're trying to solve with this "swappable battery" solution is tiny. Imagine how much more the car will cost to support this complexity, and for what benefit? Saving a few hours per year? I won't pay the additional thousands of dollars for the "swappable battery" car, and I won't pay the cost of maintaining the swappable battery stations. It's just not worth it vs spending that time getting lunch. [0] My wife and I did the math on our own driving patterns and realized we could probably get away with a level ONE charger- literally a standard 120V extension cord - for the EV we're on a waiting list for.

theli0nheart 4y ago
This is a bit of a nitpick, but L2s don’t charge slowly. Ours gets us about 30 miles per hour, so we get fully charged after a normal day’s worth of driving in about 30 minutes.
- elihu 4y ago
  It depends on your definition of "slow" and your use case. If you were on a road trip and had to stop for an hour per 30 miles at a charging station, it'd probably seem really slow. If you're plugging in after you get home from a short commute (the most common use case), then it's perfectly fine.
  - theli0nheart 4y ago
    For sure, but we’re talking in the context of a home charger here.

elihu 4y ago

Battery swap stations are an old idea, but it's really hard to actually pull it off. It requires that all the cars you service have the same battery pack, or that there are at most only a few kinds of battery pack to deal with. The packs have to be stored and charged, so you have the same electrical service requirements plus you need a place to store the batteries, and employees or robots to move them around. You need car owners to accept an ownership model where batteries are leased rather than owned. Modern EV batteries are almost always liquid cooled, so your removable battery will need some kind of fluid connection that can be disconnected and reconnected without dripping ethylene glycol or whatever on everything, and without getting air bubbles in the line. Some cars are moving towards structural batteries, which means the car is less sturdy without the battery installed. That might not be a problem if it's just sitting there. The alternative is to just do DC fast charging, which seems to be good enough for most uses. Personally I think the long-term solution here is to electrify sections of the major highways at regular intervals, so that cars can charge without stopping. Sweden has some pilot projects involving rails embedded in slots in the road surface. Overhead lines are another option (and they're cheaper), but if they're high enough for trucks to fit, then cars would have to have very tall pantographs to reach.

_8j50 4y ago
As a sibling commenter pointed out, NIO is already doing this with millions of swaps already in China. Instead of electrifying roads for cars, why not electrify them for rail cars and trains?
- elihu 4y ago
  Converting trains over to electric is also well worth doing.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> but it's really hard to actually pull it off. It requires that all the cars you service have the same battery pack, or that there are at most only a few kinds of battery pack to deal with. Precisely the kind of thing government regulation is for. Don't specify what is inside the battery pack, specify the form factor, connection points and attachment mechanisms. Leave the battery companies to figure out the rest.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

butwhywhyoh 4y ago

> I just don't get it. Governments around the world and spending trillions on this stuff so why is there no clear answer on this? Why would there need to be a "clear answer" on something that quite obviously wouldn't work? Everyone here has done a great job of explaining to you the complexity of your "simple" solution, but you don't seem to want to accept any of the explanations. You seem to think that your back-of-the-napkin calculation can just be magically turned into a major part of our transportation infrastructure. Cars aren't television remotes. The batteries in the cars aren't your standard AA battery. The situation is far more complicated than you're making it out to be.

_8j50 4y ago
Give me a break, what I have seen is someone showed me this is already being done in China. So anything you say is an excuse that is dangerously preventing climate change prevention efforts. I literally saw a video of NIO doing this and arguments like yours "cars aren't television remotes" "it's too hard" are bullshit. The interstate freeway project was hard yet it was done with trillions of dollars spent because it had to. Since china is doing it the only thing hard is that it costs more but our tax dollars are set aside to subsidize this shit but home owning rich people can make electric cars work for them with chargers so everyone better find extra time and houses fast else you're shit out of luck. Governments can force car companies to use stanrdized connections, every car has plenty of government regulated things like this. I said ELI5 so you can explain to me why my back of napkin calculation does not work when seemingly endless subsidies and cost that is passed down to consumers are in the works. NIO is already doing this without a $300B subsidy...oh and get this: selling batteries is more profitable for companies! One car is one battery but when battery stations also buy batteries that is more profit. Tesla literally sells batteries to power grids because of profit. "Who will spend tens of billions to do this" is the question and we have an answer now, but you don't seem to gey that it will be largely wasted because people will not buy electric cars if they have to wait in line every day to get a charge or filling up the charge can cause them to be late to places. An inconvenient solution is a dead solution, in a free market consumer satisfaction comes first.