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Comment by fallat | Hacker News Reader

Yeah... battery swapping seems like the next big thing for e-vecs. Imagine we shared batteries and all batteries must have some sort of reporting mechanism to report its life and charge holding and it must always be at 80% before being repurposed / fixed? Could be interesting...

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Consumer car batteries charge 20->80% in under a half hour these days, and are warranted for a minimum of 8 years.

30 minutes seems slow until you realize that you hardly ever need to charge the car away from home. I do not miss going to the gas station!

I’d guess the mechanisms needed to swap the battery would be more maintenance than they are worth.

I guess for delivery vans, which drive during peak solar production, doubling the number of batteries so you can charge during the day might make sense.

Given that Tesla tried battery swaps and canned it, and that venture funded startups already burned a billion dollars trying it and failing, I don't think many companies are eager to repeat the experiment.

China is doing it. The key thing is you need more than just a billion dollars, you need a dozen times that (or more, but the CCP doesn't need to worry about money) and credible political commitment that customers won't be left stuck with useless cars down the road.

NIO is doing some crazy crap, dunno how they pay for it.

They even have literal charging vans you can just order to come anywhere you want. You use an app to request one, they drive to your location and charge your car.

Plus they have the manned battery swap stations everyone has seen a video of.

China is throwing money at the problem, as simple as that. They're all too aware that their pollution issues need to be solved, and if it kickstarts an industry that can undercut Western competition, all the better..

China is not worried about safety and reliability in the same way Western producers are. They don't have the same liability laws.

Tesla and the major automakers can't risk their name and reputation on a crap product.

> Tesla [...] can't risk their name and reputation on a crap product.

Full Self Driving has entered the chat...

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