Another reminder of how much less overhead human-scaled systems require.
In this case, the battery swapping robot is you.
In this case, the battery swapping robot is you.
The practicality of battery swapping decreases exponentially as size and weight scale. The cost of building a battery swapping network for western-car-sized battery systems, even once solving the engineering elements (which are manageable), are likely a non-starter. Especially if the other principle technology rival is fast-charging stations.
How much added convenience is required to justify huge mechanical systems with many wear components and large maintenance costs over replacing a few charging cables every X months? Lots.
Better to bring the batteries to charge the cars when they need it: https://www.sparkcharge.io/
Instead design in a space for a secondary battery, maybe 40% the capacity of the main battery. Make those standard and swap-able.
Now, you can use the car as ordinary in either the one-battery or two-battery mode, with the 1B config being more nimble handling with less range, and the 2B config more range. In any case, you can then enjoy rapid-swap of the standard 2nd battery, or maybe just rent one for a long trip.
This also helps the automakers keep their proprietary designs on the main battery for differentiation. The 2nd battery could go in the extra trunk space or something...
Current batteries charge way faster from 0-50% than 50-100%. The curve really starts to fall off above 80%.
I usually try to plan my stops so that I’m arriving with 5-10% and charging to 60-65%. With 250kW chargers that results in a ~15min charging stop.
I don’t think the costs of development, impact to vehicle design, and infrastructure would make sense for swaps just to replace what is already a 15min charge.
Yet still, being able to get 40% in 3 minutes is still better. I'd also see little reason that a properly configured trunk couldn't hold a pair of 40% battery units. Kind of like carrying jerry-cans on the back of a rover, except you can just plug them in...
Truck yards usually already have equipment for heavy lifting, and the batteries need not be tailored to the car aesthetics and space constraints. Also, a narrower industry has a better chance to come up with a common standard.
Doing battery swaps on such vehicles would be incredibly difficult (least of all from an engineering perspective), and my suspicion that it was more subsidy scam than genuine attempt is based on other factors.