Comment by bradfa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bradfa | Hacker News Reader

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Cool, except I keep feeling like fast charging is solving the wrong problem because it usually has such a dramatically bad impact on the life of a battery.

Gasoline and diesel are currently "standard" fuels we put into a container inside our cars. It takes 5 to 10 minutes to put fuel into said container when we fill up. Why are we trying to put electrons into a battery like we put fuel into fuel tanks? Why not just have a container in the car that holds a battery?

If the battery was standard, or even had a range of standard sizes, it would only take a few minutes for a robot to pull the discharged one out and put a fully charged one in. Then you're still putting "fuel" into a container, not pushing electrons into a chemistry.

There's all kinds of positives for this battery swapping: * You can still slow charge at home. * Batteries can be slow charged at the "gas station." * We don't need expensive charging stations to be developed. * No more getting out of the car to "fuel up." * Electrical grid doesn't have to support pushing outrageous currents to chargers (think of a "gas station" with 16 chargers all running at the same time, that's serious current). * Slow charging can stagger charging (or charge at off peak) and display what batteries are currently available online. * We can do this with today's tech!

I had the same idea a while ago and talked with someone working in the automotive industry about this. The problem is that battery technology is an important differentiator in the e-mobility market so there's no chance all car markers would agree on one standard - at least not in the foreseeable future.

What good are standards bodies (think SAE, ISO, DIN) in the automotive world if they won't solve this? Also, what ever happened to driving down cost by partnering with other automakers on expensive assemblies? Having a proprietary battery is completely the opposite of what every automaker has been doing for the past 2 decades.

It's insane and is delaying the mass acceptance of electric cars.

It would not be beneficial to standardize such s young technology. It is likely that the best car battery design hasn't been invented yet. Standards bodies are there to codify best practices and not to decide things by themselves.

But you don't have to standardize the internal battery tech, just the form fit and interaction. For example, the shape and electrical connectors the battery will use. Then everyone is free to make their battery hold 2x as much as the reference design and that's OK as long as it fits and talks the same language to the car and charger. Same way I can buy AA batteries with lithium inside that last 8x longer than the generic store brand.

There's no reason to dictate the battery chemistry or internal cell layout. As long as a standard is set for slow-ish charging (i.e.: the battery tells the charger, "give me X amps at Y volts"), we're good to go.

Except, you are not going to keep your hight tech battery's after the first fill up. When things settle down it may be reasonable to have 3 or 4 grades of battery's at every station, but good luck going to a random station and them having an apropreatly aged 2013 honda civic battery in 2026.

> What good are standards bodies (think SAE, ISO, DIN) in the automotive world if they won't solve this?

Which standards in the gasoline world are comparable to the standards that you want for electric vehicles?

SAE has standards for lubricating oil properties, horsepower measurement, etc, but nothing that will let me move significant components from one gasoline car to another.

IMO, the main issue with this is Batteries are expensive and degrade over time. Which makes it very hard to trust an independent 'gas station' to actually give you the real product and deal with the older battery's correctly and swap in new ones into the mix, and creates huge incentive for people to ‘miss report’ how many times a battery has been charged etc. You would also end up with a 'full tank' lasting a somewhat arbitrary distance depending on how new your replacements where.

You can quickly monitor a battery and get accurate stats on how long it will provide amps.

You might think that, but rechargable devices basicly just guess based on past preformance. Google "Laptop Battery Self Test"

One problem with battery swapping is making them accessible enough. I think current designs have the batteries under the floor of the midsection in order to keep the centre of gravity low, which makes them rather difficult to change without raising the car on ramp.

A second problem I can think of is that batteries fade over time, and people aren't going to want older batteries being swapped in for their flat but fresh units. Nor will "gas" stations, for that matter.

In the UK I'm starting to see more and more parking spaces with electric chargers so drivers can refuel while the car is stationary anyway.

I think the fast chargers would be useful for motorway service stations but elsewhere charging little and often (i.e at work, in car parks and at home) should be "good enough" for most uses.

As mentioned by xavi, betterplace is working on quick change battery tech. You drive up a ramp and the robot is inside the ramp.

Regarding slightly degraded batteries, I think that's less of a concern. You'd pay less for a less charged or capable battery (only fair). There'd probably even be grades of batteries, like we have for gasoline (RON or octane).

Also, people seem to have no problem doing exactly this with propane tanks (in the USA) for their BBQ grills. The tanks you exchange are definitely not as nice as the ones you can buy new and get filled but the convenience of being able to exchange a tank outweighs a lot of people's desire to get their tank refilled. You can always get your tank refilled, even if you previously exchanged it, you're not required to only exchange them. Same exact business model as exchangeable batteries.

The exchange system (or fast charge) is simply for longer trips exceeding battery range or when you weren't able to recharge enough at home. Curb-side parking spot chargers don't do anything different than in-home chargers, they're still slow and still don't solve the "I want to go further than my battery" problem.

Fast chargers, if used sparingly, could work. It's overuse of it that's the problem. I guess it all depends on how often people are using them. The one worry I'd think is that people won't install a home charger ($2k or so investment) but will rely upon the fast chargers or exchange systems as they do now for gasoline. If you're fast charging every other day or even twice a week, that's not good.

> Also, people seem to have no problem doing exactly this with propane tanks (in the USA) for their BBQ grills. The tanks you exchange are definitely not as nice as the ones you can buy new and get filled but the convenience of being able to exchange a tank outweighs a lot of people's desire to get their tank refilled.

Except that no one cares what their tank looks like - they only care about how much it holds, or rather, how much gas they're going to get out of it, and whether it leaks.

The same is true of batteries, and that's the problem if batteries degrade with usage, heat, deep discharge, and so on.

Oh, and I do try to get the nicest propane tank when I exchange. I'm not the only one.

www.betterplace.com does what you describe

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