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 wit

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.