For U.S. companies, the race for the new EV battery is on

* There's no standard battery pack between makes and models.

* It is one of the more expensive components of the car, so operating a business around taking in and giving out extremely expensive equipment is a massive hurdle from a capital investment standpoint, not to mention the equipment to remove and install the batteries - you basically need the equivalent of a mechanic shop or oil-change setup

* Battery packs, as currently designed, are not always fully separable from the rest of the car- cooling systems etc. are not 100% self contained, but may pump heat elsewhere in the vehicle to be radiated off

You're basically asking a company to take on the ownership aspect of the most expensive part of an EV, to accept strangers' batteries and to give out yours in exchange. To make this possible, major manufacturers would have to agree not only on a standard for their batteries, but also to make the batteries quickly removable.

You're asking consumers to buy a car with a brand new battery in it, then after a few hours of driving to take that battery to a third party service station and give it away for some stranger's battery that may not perform as well.

To be honest, I think if this were the present-day reality, it would eliminate pretty much all of the concerns of buying an electric car- you don't need to add a lot of time to long trips (no worries that super chargers aren't available or operating at peak efficiency), and you don't have to worry that the battery going dead due to a fault renders your vehicle worth less than the cost of a new battery- because the service station that swapped out the battery for you would be on the hook for the cost.

However, I struggle to believe it would be cost effective- your customers can charge their own batteries at home for cheaper than they can exchange them, so they aren't going to be exchanging nearly as frequently as an ICE fills up at a gas station.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tesla-gets-295m-in-green-su...

Once profitable from gamed subsidies and they begin expiring flee headquarters out of the state.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0

Nio's plan is to have 4,000 stations by 2025:

https://www.nio.com/news/nio-announces-nio-power-2025-batter...

They've recently done a deal with EnBW to install swap stations at EnBW's charge parks:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/nio-in...

This right here. I'm no stranger to 6+-hour car rides, and my planning guideline has always been to assume 30 minutes of stops for every three hours driven. And even current battery and charging tech is good enough to satisfy that time budget.

Otherwise it’s similar to the original Tesla situation where each manufacturer has to build their own network of battery swapping stations all over the world at great cost. If you’re out if juice in your VW and the only thing near by is a Chevy station you’re doomed to get a tow.

Short of a government mandate, which will never happen in the US, I don’t think automakers would ever get on one standard.

For short-ish local trips, I agree that you just don't need to care, because you charge overnight, so pretty much any new day when you need the car, it's fully charged.

My concern has always been for longer trips. Part just the fear that I'd fail to plan properly and end up stranded somewhere without a charge (assuming the current world where charging is a lot harder to come by than gasoline refueling). But even in the case where I plan properly, the idea of having to sit for 45 minutes -- or even 20 -- while waiting for the car to charge seemed super annoying. But maybe it isn't so bad, considering that on a longer car trip it's often nice (and just a good idea in general) to take breaks every now and then. At a half-hour stop to charge, I could use the restroom, perhaps get a light snack to eat, or even just catch up on whatever dumb things had shown up on my phone while I'd been driving.

It doesn't matter. You'll be lectured none the less.

I had someone ask me about electric vehicle fires just before the holiday. She is worried because her son has a preorder deposit on a Tesla Cybertruck. I told her they were safe; fires are unlikely, and ICE cars burn too. That won't stop the worry; you can't tell people anything.

Bottom line is people believe they're dangerous. I knew that would happen and said so: Telsa et al. needed to do the necessary education before the inevitable headlines hit. They didn't, so here we are. Got modded into the dirt for predicting this.

Go ahead, smash that down button. You can't tell people anything.

If the probability of a EV fire is equal or less than a gas or diesel car fire the concern is illogical.

Even if you don't take his word, it's tough to suggest that he isn't effectively responsible for all of Tesla's success, at least in terms of knowing when the technology was ready to be turned into serious cars and hiring the right people to achieve that, both in terms of design and getting the production lines to scale (which was the prerequisite for the 2018 stock bonus that is now responsible for a large portion of his stake in TSLA/net worth).