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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

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.

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.