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?
Imagine the cost of stations everywhere that would have tanker-trucks deliver fluid that you’d put in cars
This is not comparable.
The fuel is spent and sold. Gas stations usually only have a few days supply of inventory.
This is like holding engines in inventory to swap without notice on the spot. But in this case the engines cost $10k+.
The fee to swap is about $12…so you have to swap each battery about 800 times to break even. See how you’re wrong yet?
Well yeah but the comparison here should be against a typical BEV. ICE cars are already being phased out regardless.