Battery swapping is a technology that could solve one key barrier for EV adoption: consumers’ range anxiety and the long waiting time for battery charging. Wouldn’t you feel more assured on a weekend trip if you knew you could stop at a swap station and replace depleted battery packs with fully charged ones in five minutes? But this isn’t easy to do, as Tesla and Better Place’s past failures. In China, however, battery swapping has been a reality for a couple of years. How did Chinese companies like Nio make it work with 2,300 swapping stations nationwide? What can companies outside China learn from the Chinese experience?
I don’t oppose the idea of battery station, but who owns the battery then? When I bought the car, am I leasing the battery? How about used car?
I would guess a swappable battery would be separated from the vehicle, similar to a gas bottle for a grill.
The battery would be rented for a small deposit and on swapping you only pay the energy + service fee.
I guess you could also buy one to own, but then could not swap that.
That’s how it would make sense, at least.
The company (NIO) owns them and you are leasing the batteries. The car is cheaper this way, as you don’t buy the battery up front, but pay a monthly fee (~200+ in Germany).
You have a fixed number of swaps per month, above that you have to pay extra.
Source: colleague uses a car like this and explained the details.
What if they EOL the battery and stops the leasing program? Now the perfectly fine car is non functional because it’s missing a battery. If I replace it, I’m just contributing more waste, not in materal but energy. Is that the “green” future we all after?
I’d assume you could still charge them the regular way. You’d just no longer get a fresh one, but that just puts you on par with the other EVs