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Comment by rdtwo | Hacker News Reader

Why not can you imagine having the freedom to change your car nearly instantly and go wherever you want. No range anxiety

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In a sane world, it would take less time to recharge an EV, not more. Good industrial and government leadership, working together, would have given us a swappable battery standard by now.

The new 800V EVs only take 15 minutes from ~20% to 80%.

Which is 10 minutes longer than it takes me to refuel my IC vehicles from 5% to 100%, and 14 minutes longer than it should take.

It's funny how HN'ers will fight to the death arguing for swappable batteries in cell phones, where they offer vanishingly few benefits, and against swappable batteries in motor vehicles, where they could potentially make all the difference in the world.

Swappable batteries aren't viable without a new business model. If you buy an EV today, it comes with a battery with a ~10 year warranty, and replacing that battery after the warranty ends is a pretty expensive affair.

Nobody with a new battery is going to want to swap it out for a old, potentially degraded battery. But everyone with an old battery would be happy to try to swap their way into a new battery.

Instead, I think you'd need a model where the battery isn't included in the price of the car, and you have a monthly subscription to rent a battery from either the dealer or a third-party. That way you aren't attached to the specific battery you're using, and the subscription fees go towards replacing old batteries as needed. The subscription would either be a base fee + price per replacement, or a base fee for rental + unlimited replacements.

Nobody with a new battery is going to want to swap it out for a old, potentially degraded battery. But everyone with an old battery would be happy to try to swap their way into a new battery.

Great, this old schtick again. News flash: nobody cares whether or not they own their car battery. With modern BMS systems, you would basically pay by the coulomb.

But yeah, I think this particular ship has sailed, at least for the near-term future. Huge missed opportunity. Refueling an EV should be as quick and easy as swapping out a BBQ propane cylinder -- which is also something you don't care if you own or not -- at your local convenience store.

Electric vehicle batteries are quite different from phone batteries and propane tanks. They are heavy, large, expensive and far from being self-serviceable. To build and operate a large network of conveniently located swap stations would require a huge financial risk because the swaps would be necessarily more expensive per unit of energy restored than the charge stations, meaning the swap stations would only capture a portion of charge business.

Perhaps in the future, total swap automation and inexpensive battery restoration or transport will reduce the risk of building the network and EV sales will finally become viable for the small minority who don’t want to take periodic breaks during the occasional long trip.

10 extra min after 4-6 hrs of driving isn’t significant unless you’re doing a Cannonball Run. And they can go even higher voltage in future.

Imagine how cheap gas would be if no one wanted it.

I’d guess it’d be obscenely expensive without economies of scale based on current demand and distribution.

As far as “no range anxiety” people in that world would just be making similar arguments, “what if there’s no nearby gas station”, “what if it’s out of gas”, “I can’t just plug-in anywhere” etc.

> I’d guess it’d be obscenely expensive without economies of scale based on current demand and distribution.

Then swap out gasoline for diesel. If nothing else, I can get vegetable oil at the grocery store at a price that isn't too bad.

> As far as “no range anxiety” people in that world would just be making similar arguments, “what if there’s no nearby gas station”, “what if it’s out of gas”, “I can’t just plug-in anywhere” etc.

That's not how (plug-in, and surely these would be plug-in) hybrids work...

That argument about gas was a major argument against gasoline cars back in the day. It took major infrastructure investment to build out the gas network.

At the time there was no good alternative with existing infrastructure in place.

Today with EVs and modern battery tech that isn’t true.

Fractional distillation. You are going to get what you are going to get. Unless you find suitable alternatives for all oil products, gasoline will still be produced in the same quantities.

Somebody will find something to do with the unused byproduct gasoline. I consider filling up my car to be a noble use instead of just burning it.

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