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I remember a few years ago reading a article that promised a liquid 'fuel' that would recharge batteries. The idea being that you would pull into a gas station

by ds 4y ago

I remember a few years ago reading a article that promised a liquid 'fuel' that would recharge batteries. The idea being that you would pull into a gas station and expel your uncharged liquid and refill with charged liquid. The liquid stuff might be a pipe dream, but I think the goal should be for electric cars to have a 'instant' fill up option shortly. Having a network of such stations greatly aleviates issues of trying to squeeze every last watt hour out of every battery and lets range anxiety be less important. I dont really care as much if my car only gets 200 miles range if I can fill up in 2 minutes at any existing gas station. Filling up of course can mean anything from the liquid fuel meme idea above to a fast battery-swap to some megawatt based 'super fast' charger. It really doesnt matter

throwaway892238 4y ago
A hundred years ago, there were service stations that would swap out your electric car or truck's battery in a couple minutes so you could keep driving without recharging. Essential at the time because the range was far lower than today. Those companies lasted for about two decades. Eventually the price/performance of gas vehicles won out, and we know the story from there.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  This has been trialled in modern EVs, but hasn't caught on for three reasons: * There's no standard battery pack between makes and models. * It is one of the more expensive components of the car, so operating a business around taking in and giving out extremely expensive equipment is a massive hurdle from a capital investment standpoint, not to mention the equipment to remove and install the batteries - you basically need the equivalent of a mechanic shop or oil-change setup * Battery packs, as currently designed, are not always fully separable from the rest of the car- cooling systems etc. are not 100% self contained, but may pump heat elsewhere in the vehicle to be radiated off You're basically asking a company to take on the ownership aspect of the most expensive part of an EV, to accept strangers' batteries and to give out yours in exchange. To make this possible, major manufacturers would have to agree not only on a standard for their batteries, but also to make the batteries quickly removable. You're asking consumers to buy a car with a brand new battery in it, then after a few hours of driving to take that battery to a third party service station and give it away for some stranger's battery that may not perform as well. To be honest, I think if this were the present-day reality, it would eliminate pretty much all of the concerns of buying an electric car- you don't need to add a lot of time to long trips (no worries that super chargers aren't available or operating at peak efficiency), and you don't have to worry that the battery going dead due to a fault renders your vehicle worth less than the cost of a new battery- because the service station that swapped out the battery for you would be on the hook for the cost. However, I struggle to believe it would be cost effective- your customers can charge their own batteries at home for cheaper than they can exchange them, so they aren't going to be exchanging nearly as frequently as an ICE fills up at a gas station.
  - throwaway892238 4y ago
    The way they did it 100 years ago was as a subscription/contract. You agreed to pay X amount to be able to use the service consistently (again, works better with taxis and trucks due to their constant use) over a period of time. You would drive into a bay, they would lift the vehicle, remove the battery, replace it, test it, and on you went. Battery and vehicle design was simpler then, so this was a trivial procedure. I think in order to make it practical today we would need a standard for "quick-replace" batteries. The thing that would make it practical would be that manufacturers would no longer need to go to crazy lengths with their battery design, because range wouldn't matter as much, because you could replace the battery so quickly at a service station. Another interesting benefit is that they could make the cars tell drivers to change out sooner, so fewer batteries get completely discharged, preserving battery efficiency. Like gas/diesel service stations do today, they could support a couple different chemistries and battery formats, with trucks having purpose-built bays and stations as they do today. > your customers can charge their own batteries at home for cheaper than they can exchange them This isn't strictly true. 40 million Americans live in apartments, and there is no way for most people in apartments to charge at home. And as we depend more on renewables, the time at which you use electricity will become more important; solar isn't available at night, wind can die down, hydro may be less useful during droughts. And this is all assuming we complete building the grid upgrades needed to charge 280 Million passenger vehicles overnight every night. Not to mention 1 in 4 chargers in the USA don't work. I think battery swaps are going to be an important mitigation, but obviously not a panacea.
cjbgkagh 4y ago
Could be Vanadium redox batteries.
xeromal 4y ago
Tesla had a single station somewhere in California I think that would drop your battery and replace it with a spare on your trip. One your way back, you were required to swap out for your old one again or be charged a major fee. I think it was a stunt more than anything but I always liked the idea. Seemed really cool.
- cma 4y ago
  California gave them $300 million for it: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tesla-gets-295m-in-green-subsidy-credits-for-technology-not-offered-to-customers https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tesla-gets-295m-in-green-su... Once profitable from gamed subsidies and they begin expiring flee headquarters out of the state.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    The watchdog.org page is down but > Tesla claimed the credits between 2012 and mid-2014 — part of a program designed to encourage the carmaker to promote its new battery-swap technology. The program did not require evidence the company actually provided the service. Sounds like 300M isn't the total just for the battery swap tech, but I might be wrong.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    California fixed the loophole by making EV's without battery swap technology also eligible for the full subsidy. So non-Tesla EV makers benefited from Tesla bringing attention to the issue.
- clouddrover 4y ago
  Nio has hundreds of battery swap stations. Nio cars can swap a 100 kWh battery in 6 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0 Nio's plan is to have 4,000 stations by 2025: https://www.nio.com/news/nio-announces-nio-power-2025-battery-swap-station-deployment-plan https://www.nio.com/news/nio-announces-nio-power-2025-batter... They've recently done a deal with EnBW to install swap stations at EnBW's charge parks: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/nio-install-20-battery-swapping-stations-enbw-charging-parks-2022-12-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/nio-in...
themitigating 4y ago
Most people don't drive more than the range of most EVs a day. Once we get chargers in homes, at parking garages, and on the street we'll have covered most use cases. Trips will require fast chargers but people often stop for food or bathroom so there's an overlap in time Will there be extra time for most people due to a few long trips a year? Yes, a bit but that's worth it. Finally there is a percentage of people who this will not convenient for and they should continue to use gas or diesel.
- kibwen 4y ago
  > Trips will require fast chargers but people often stop for food or bathroom so there's an overlap in time This right here. I'm no stranger to 6+-hour car rides, and my planning guideline has always been to assume 30 minutes of stops for every three hours driven. And even current battery and charging tech is good enough to satisfy that time budget.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Of course driver breaks are important but when automated driving is here it'll be just a nuisance.
wilsonnb3 4y ago
This method, in the form of swappable batteries, seems to be working well for electric scooters/mopeds. See Gogoro, whose battery swap stations will apparently outnumber gas stations in Taiwan soon. Obviously there is a scale problem since an electric car battery is 50-100 kWh compared to 1.7 kWh for a scooter battery. It still seems like a promising technology though, especially if someone can figure out a form factor that makes the battery swap easier.
- MBCook 4y ago
  Ignoring everything else, it seems impractical to me unless all automakers get on the same standard. Otherwise it’s similar to the original Tesla situation where each manufacturer has to build their own network of battery swapping stations all over the world at great cost. If you’re out if juice in your VW and the only thing near by is a Chevy station you’re doomed to get a tow. Short of a government mandate, which will never happen in the US, I don’t think automakers would ever get on one standard.
  - wilsonnb3 4y ago
    Much like how it would be inconvenient to refuel my Ford Escape if I could only do it at Ford gas stations or with Ford fuel but that is a solved problem. I believe pre-unleaded gas it was just a standard but the US Gov made some regulations in the 70s about it. I think it would play out similarly, with companies coalescing on a standard on their own and regulation coming afterwards.
MBCook 4y ago
Do you have an EV? I’ve had one for a year and I’m at the point where I don’t think 2 minute fill-ups matter at all. As long as you have reasonable range (~200mi) most people will never drive it in a day. All you have to do is charge it while you’re sleeping* and you’re golden. That leaves road trips. A 45 minute charge gets kind of annoying. But vehicles/chargers are getting better. I’m pretty sure there are 20 minute or less vehicles. That’s a fine number, but every bit helps. Unless you’re driving a long distance every day without stopping much home charging is 98% of your “fill-ups”. And as long as you have a Level 2 charger speed doesn’t matter too much. * Can’t charge at home? Don’t buy an EV. Until we have apartment/street charging worked out so everyone can charge overnight EVs won’t be ready for everyone.
- bdcravens 4y ago
  Drove from Houston to San Diego, using Electrify America chargers. My EV6 supports the fastest charging speeds, so most stops were less than 20 minutes.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    There you go. I knew they Cayenne was fast, but it’s not exactly affordable. I know my car, the Mach E, is one of the slowest. And it’s not terrible. So it goes. The bigger problem right now seems to be charger maintenance/reliability. But as more people use them and more stations get installed I’m hoping it will improve.
    - bdcravens 4y ago
      Yes, at almost every single stop there was at least one charging stall out of service. Many stations were small, in the little tiny towns along the freeway, with only 4 stalls. I did speak to an EA contractor at one - he said that EA will consider it an emergency, with a technician sent out immediately, only if every stall is out of service.
  - kylehotchkiss 4y ago
    How was climbing into the mountains? Did the range start to dip suddenly?
LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
Sounds like https://h2-industries.com/en/lohc-technology-overview/ https://h2-industries.com/en/lohc-technology-overview/ & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_organic_hydrogen_carriers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_organic_hydrogen_carrie... Just add some cheap and reliable fuel-cell...
hinkley 4y ago
By my recollection these are called Flow batteries. The power density is still not great, and I think we still need better technology to “wash” dentrites out of these batteries. They are effectively a cousin to fuel cells and I wonder if someone needs to think of them that way to make it work.

by ds 4y ago

throwaway892238 4y ago

A hundred years ago, there were service stations that would swap out your electric car or truck's battery in a couple minutes so you could keep driving without recharging. Essential at the time because the range was far lower than today. Those companies lasted for about two decades. Eventually the price/performance of gas vehicles won out, and we know the story from there.

zdragnar 4y ago
This has been trialled in modern EVs, but hasn't caught on for three reasons: * There's no standard battery pack between makes and models. * It is one of the more expensive components of the car, so operating a business around taking in and giving out extremely expensive equipment is a massive hurdle from a capital investment standpoint, not to mention the equipment to remove and install the batteries - you basically need the equivalent of a mechanic shop or oil-change setup * Battery packs, as currently designed, are not always fully separable from the rest of the car- cooling systems etc. are not 100% self contained, but may pump heat elsewhere in the vehicle to be radiated off You're basically asking a company to take on the ownership aspect of the most expensive part of an EV, to accept strangers' batteries and to give out yours in exchange. To make this possible, major manufacturers would have to agree not only on a standard for their batteries, but also to make the batteries quickly removable. You're asking consumers to buy a car with a brand new battery in it, then after a few hours of driving to take that battery to a third party service station and give it away for some stranger's battery that may not perform as well. To be honest, I think if this were the present-day reality, it would eliminate pretty much all of the concerns of buying an electric car- you don't need to add a lot of time to long trips (no worries that super chargers aren't available or operating at peak efficiency), and you don't have to worry that the battery going dead due to a fault renders your vehicle worth less than the cost of a new battery- because the service station that swapped out the battery for you would be on the hook for the cost. However, I struggle to believe it would be cost effective- your customers can charge their own batteries at home for cheaper than they can exchange them, so they aren't going to be exchanging nearly as frequently as an ICE fills up at a gas station.
- throwaway892238 4y ago
  The way they did it 100 years ago was as a subscription/contract. You agreed to pay X amount to be able to use the service consistently (again, works better with taxis and trucks due to their constant use) over a period of time. You would drive into a bay, they would lift the vehicle, remove the battery, replace it, test it, and on you went. Battery and vehicle design was simpler then, so this was a trivial procedure. I think in order to make it practical today we would need a standard for "quick-replace" batteries. The thing that would make it practical would be that manufacturers would no longer need to go to crazy lengths with their battery design, because range wouldn't matter as much, because you could replace the battery so quickly at a service station. Another interesting benefit is that they could make the cars tell drivers to change out sooner, so fewer batteries get completely discharged, preserving battery efficiency. Like gas/diesel service stations do today, they could support a couple different chemistries and battery formats, with trucks having purpose-built bays and stations as they do today. > your customers can charge their own batteries at home for cheaper than they can exchange them This isn't strictly true. 40 million Americans live in apartments, and there is no way for most people in apartments to charge at home. And as we depend more on renewables, the time at which you use electricity will become more important; solar isn't available at night, wind can die down, hydro may be less useful during droughts. And this is all assuming we complete building the grid upgrades needed to charge 280 Million passenger vehicles overnight every night. Not to mention 1 in 4 chargers in the USA don't work. I think battery swaps are going to be an important mitigation, but obviously not a panacea.

cjbgkagh 4y ago

Could be Vanadium redox batteries.

xeromal 4y ago

Tesla had a single station somewhere in California I think that would drop your battery and replace it with a spare on your trip. One your way back, you were required to swap out for your old one again or be charged a major fee. I think it was a stunt more than anything but I always liked the idea. Seemed really cool.

cma 4y ago
California gave them $300 million for it: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tesla-gets-295m-in-green-subsidy-credits-for-technology-not-offered-to-customers https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tesla-gets-295m-in-green-su... Once profitable from gamed subsidies and they begin expiring flee headquarters out of the state.
- judge2020 4y ago
  The watchdog.org page is down but > Tesla claimed the credits between 2012 and mid-2014 — part of a program designed to encourage the carmaker to promote its new battery-swap technology. The program did not require evidence the company actually provided the service. Sounds like 300M isn't the total just for the battery swap tech, but I might be wrong.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  California fixed the loophole by making EV's without battery swap technology also eligible for the full subsidy. So non-Tesla EV makers benefited from Tesla bringing attention to the issue.
clouddrover 4y ago
Nio has hundreds of battery swap stations. Nio cars can swap a 100 kWh battery in 6 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0 Nio's plan is to have 4,000 stations by 2025: https://www.nio.com/news/nio-announces-nio-power-2025-battery-swap-station-deployment-plan https://www.nio.com/news/nio-announces-nio-power-2025-batter... They've recently done a deal with EnBW to install swap stations at EnBW's charge parks: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/nio-install-20-battery-swapping-stations-enbw-charging-parks-2022-12-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/nio-in...

themitigating 4y ago

Most people don't drive more than the range of most EVs a day. Once we get chargers in homes, at parking garages, and on the street we'll have covered most use cases. Trips will require fast chargers but people often stop for food or bathroom so there's an overlap in time Will there be extra time for most people due to a few long trips a year? Yes, a bit but that's worth it. Finally there is a percentage of people who this will not convenient for and they should continue to use gas or diesel.

kibwen 4y ago
> Trips will require fast chargers but people often stop for food or bathroom so there's an overlap in time This right here. I'm no stranger to 6+-hour car rides, and my planning guideline has always been to assume 30 minutes of stops for every three hours driven. And even current battery and charging tech is good enough to satisfy that time budget.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Of course driver breaks are important but when automated driving is here it'll be just a nuisance.

wilsonnb3 4y ago

This method, in the form of swappable batteries, seems to be working well for electric scooters/mopeds. See Gogoro, whose battery swap stations will apparently outnumber gas stations in Taiwan soon. Obviously there is a scale problem since an electric car battery is 50-100 kWh compared to 1.7 kWh for a scooter battery. It still seems like a promising technology though, especially if someone can figure out a form factor that makes the battery swap easier.

MBCook 4y ago
Ignoring everything else, it seems impractical to me unless all automakers get on the same standard. Otherwise it’s similar to the original Tesla situation where each manufacturer has to build their own network of battery swapping stations all over the world at great cost. If you’re out if juice in your VW and the only thing near by is a Chevy station you’re doomed to get a tow. Short of a government mandate, which will never happen in the US, I don’t think automakers would ever get on one standard.
- wilsonnb3 4y ago
  Much like how it would be inconvenient to refuel my Ford Escape if I could only do it at Ford gas stations or with Ford fuel but that is a solved problem. I believe pre-unleaded gas it was just a standard but the US Gov made some regulations in the 70s about it. I think it would play out similarly, with companies coalescing on a standard on their own and regulation coming afterwards.

MBCook 4y ago

Do you have an EV? I’ve had one for a year and I’m at the point where I don’t think 2 minute fill-ups matter at all. As long as you have reasonable range (~200mi) most people will never drive it in a day. All you have to do is charge it while you’re sleeping* and you’re golden. That leaves road trips. A 45 minute charge gets kind of annoying. But vehicles/chargers are getting better. I’m pretty sure there are 20 minute or less vehicles. That’s a fine number, but every bit helps. Unless you’re driving a long distance every day without stopping much home charging is 98% of your “fill-ups”. And as long as you have a Level 2 charger speed doesn’t matter too much. * Can’t charge at home? Don’t buy an EV. Until we have apartment/street charging worked out so everyone can charge overnight EVs won’t be ready for everyone.

bdcravens 4y ago
Drove from Houston to San Diego, using Electrify America chargers. My EV6 supports the fastest charging speeds, so most stops were less than 20 minutes.
- MBCook 4y ago
  There you go. I knew they Cayenne was fast, but it’s not exactly affordable. I know my car, the Mach E, is one of the slowest. And it’s not terrible. So it goes. The bigger problem right now seems to be charger maintenance/reliability. But as more people use them and more stations get installed I’m hoping it will improve.
  - bdcravens 4y ago
    Yes, at almost every single stop there was at least one charging stall out of service. Many stations were small, in the little tiny towns along the freeway, with only 4 stalls. I did speak to an EA contractor at one - he said that EA will consider it an emergency, with a technician sent out immediately, only if every stall is out of service.
- kylehotchkiss 4y ago
  How was climbing into the mountains? Did the range start to dip suddenly?

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago

Sounds like https://h2-industries.com/en/lohc-technology-overview/ https://h2-industries.com/en/lohc-technology-overview/ & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_organic_hydrogen_carriers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_organic_hydrogen_carrie... Just add some cheap and reliable fuel-cell...

hinkley 4y ago

By my recollection these are called Flow batteries. The power density is still not great, and I think we still need better technology to “wash” dentrites out of these batteries. They are effectively a cousin to fuel cells and I wonder if someone needs to think of them that way to make it work.