Better Place, an Israeli battery swapping startup, secured hundreds of millions in financing, but went bankrupt in 2013.Over the last month, two countries have taken steps towards a technology that was once a white-whale of electric vehicle manufacturing: swappable batteries., Chinese car manufacturer Nio opened an electric vehicle battery swapping station in Norway last month. Drivers will supposedly be able to swap drained batteries in a matter of minutes.
: “considering the constraint of space in urban areas for setting up charging stations at scale, a battery swapping policy will be brought out.”In theory, the approach side steps any need for breakthroughs in battery capacity or speed. Rather than waiting to fill up a depleted battery, a driver could treat a car more like a camera or toy, swapping out the battery when needed.
But in practice, says Gil Tal, director of the University of California Davis’ Plug-in Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Research Center, battery swaps replace the challenge of fast charging with another. “The problem is that for each car on the road, you have many more batteries waiting in storage,” he says. A company could cut down on the number of batteries it kept on hand by charging them faster—but that would just displace the fast-charging costs.
Is the electric vehicle now becoming increasingly popular? Have the sales of electric vehicles soared recently? My BBC link is about Olympus Mons.
Swappable batteries should've been default.
If they weren't so big than it's an awesome odea
No
An Indian startup Kazam has setup a dependable EV charging network across different provinces in India. The company also provides EV charging solutions by means of EV chargers. To learn more, visit:
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Japan already does this.
It's an inelegant solution that will never be mainstream. People steal catalytic converters, what do you think is going to happen to the batteries?