this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Let's say the infrastructure is there for this, and you don't have to purchase the battery with a new EV...you just purchase a battery plan for like 100$ a month. It'd easily cut 10-20k off the cost of an EV up front.
Plus, quick charging isn't quick. At best you're looking at a 20 minute stop, and you're praying a stall is open when you get there. This could solve that problem as well.
It's an interesting idea.
Especially living in a city, this looks interesting to me. 'Fast' charging I've seen was in the range 30-60 min but then it's like the phone, from about 20% up to 80%. So living in a city, I'd have to wait for half an hour for half the battery.
With a swap-station, it could be nearly as fast as a fossil fuel stop. About 2 minutes for a 0% to 100% stop.
This also allows for smaller batteries, for smaller cars, for lighter cars. You don't need to carry a lot of overall range if you can swap/refill to 100% in 2 minutes.
I see comments like this about EVs all the time but it just isn't my experience at all. I've never in my life charged for an hour at a DC fast charger. On most EVs, you'll see a 15-30 minutes for 0-80% charge but you don't have to charge above 60% where the charge rate usually slows significantly. For instance, a 10-60% charge on my car takes about 10 minutes and that gets me close to 150 miles of range. All of this assumes you don't have access to level 2 or even level 1 charging. If you do, then you'd never need to go out of your way to charge.
For most of the current owners it's not a problem, EVs are expensive so they likely own houses (where they can top up whenever) and are fairly wealthy. Battery swapping means hassle free and cheap now for the rest of us.