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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Battery Swap works. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Forget the Gresham's law "bad batteries drive out good" idea, batteries are not a currency they are a use value. Bad batteries will be removed from circulation.

As battery energy density rises, and size falls, the idea that batteries need to be complex and integrated into the vehicle monocoque will retire against the use value of a standard size replacable brick.

Remember we have EV forever now. We're at the model T Ford era of battery vehicle.

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The battery swap idea is kept away at arm's length by car manufacturers themselves who feel responsible for customers mishandling batteries. Innovative adoptions are thwarted due to lawsuits, legal issues, ethics; like the conversation behind the too-soon viability of self-driving cars.

The best use case for battery swap is by vehicle fleet owners, like Amazon and their Rivians. Or by corporations with overlord like discipline over their equipment and workers.

I love it when second order effects are used to justify first order decisions.

I believe it's much simpler: there was no financial advantage to Musk toward achieving market dominance and the prior history of auto industry execs collaborating on a standard early in the life of a new product is low. There was significant financial advantage to Musk selling best of breed, and competing on battery quality and range was in his interest.

I believe Tesla and Ford and others position on commonality like charger plugging is applicable here. They probably needed to be regulated into it. Which they were in Europe and Asia.

US Lawfare would stop alcohol and gasoline dead as new products. And sex, television, and the Internet.

> I love it when second order effects are used to justify first order decisions.

This is how the entire free market works. If you design a product in such a way that it increases liability, manufacturing cost or reusability, a smart business will always veto it. Their goal is to design a product, not a tool. Products are designed to encourage repeat business, not to work best for the user. Tesla and Ford have no reason to encourage each other to drive lower margins. It's probably the main reason neither of them have attempted such a deal, besides the logistics nightmare.

> US Lawfare would stop alcohol and gasoline dead as new products. And sex, television, and the Internet.

I swear to god; all it took was one FTC suit against Apple and half the damn website wants to depose US regulators. What has gotten into you lot?

There's a difference between regulatory impost and lawfare. I have no beef with the regulator. I would like the car industry regulated to require swappable unit battery designs.

> Their goal is to design a product, not a tool

PaaS incoming for those products accidentally designed as tools.

> Battery Swap works

Where?

China. Nio in the mainland for cars and gogoro doing scooter batteries in Taiwan. It's been used for industrial vehicles for decades. The videos I've seen of a nio swap show its a sub 5min changeover, for a full charge. And, the swap stacks are obvious candidates to soak surplus wind and solar power.

You’re forgetting the dynamic that allows battery swapping to occur there. You’re essentially leasing access to the batteries. I suspect in many countries leasing part of the vehicle (ie the part that actually lets you go anywhere) is pretty unpalatable. Otherwise, if you’re getting a battery swap you’ll get a battery of unknown quality. I know I wouldn’t want one.

Weird take and counter real world experience globally with "leased" items, eg: propane tanks, etc.

Kleenheat and other gas tank providers are responsible for tank inspectections and rotating out tanks that are getting old and unreliable.

Hot battery swap in Taiwain is logged up the whazoo for seamless ePurchase; you swap a battery for your vehicle and use it - time of purchase is logged, vehicle mileage is on your app, if a battery fails to deliver the expected milage | charge then there's no real issue, data is available and it's easy for the provider to fail that battery and provide customer with replacement and redress an economic issues.

Propane tanks are a weird comparison. You’re leasing the entire thing, and then paying only for fuel. It’s closer to leasing an entire vehicle.

With battery leasing you’ve got a shell of a car you presumably pay for, and lease the battery. Leasing the entire car and also being able to do battery swaps is an advantage, but if you own the car then now the company that does the battery swaps dictates how good of a battery you get in a swap. Again, not sure a lot of people (myself included) would be on board with that.

The tank is not the vehicle, the grill is the vehicle! People own their grills and swap the tanks. No one worries that much about the tanks because they are effectively interchangeable across brands (after some lawsuits and FTC intervention) and their performance is now regulated. Batteries are a great comparison and need the same kinds of consumer protections.

Are we talking about proper 'leases' on propane tanks (usually very large propane tanks, meant to be attached to the side of a house/business)? Or are you referring to the usual 20 lb tanks that are stored underneath grills? Because everyone I know 'owns' 20 lb tanks. Nobody pays some monthly fee to lease them. You just typically exchange the entire tank, fuel and all, for whatever other tank someone has.

If that was how the battery swaps work, then I'd agree, but that isn't what Nio is doing. You are paying a monthly fee for the battery in addition to paying for each swap.

> Because everyone I know 'owns' 20 lb tanks.

By your own air quoting you know they don't own them.

The gas companies own those tanks and responsible for inspecting them whenever they rotate back for a refill.

The also choose the economic deal, they've baked a "lease fee" into their costings and are happy enough to ignore tanks that are never returned as most are returned, the total volume is high and the costs of chasing strays (that have an expiry date in any case) are greater than the value of gathering them back.

It's possible that EV batteries will one day have the same deal as propane tanks, more or less wrt to an explicit lease fee Vs an invisible one.

There’s no ambiguity here. You own the 20 lb tanks. Now, after they expire most propane companies won’t refill them, but otherwise it’s yours to keep. You could argue that this isn’t actually “owning” it, but for all intents and purposes it is. You’re responsible for making sure it’s not expired when using it, although the companies that do all the exchanges are responsible for making sure tanks they sell are not expired.

The is the misapplied Gresham's law model. You won't get a battery of unknown quality, you will get a battery which does exactly what it says it does and misbehaving batteries will be pulled from the stack.

It's a fallacy to think rental models fall to the lowest common denominator. Lemons get driven out of the system because they are unprofitable.

I agree you won't get a total dud of a battery if you can swap it, but why would I exchange my brand new battery for one that could potentially have hundreds of thousands of miles on it and therefore the range isn't nearly as good? It basically sets the guaranteed battery you receive as the lowest that Nio considers 'acceptable'.

In this model you would never buy a car with a brand new battery. You'd buy the car and pay the first deposit on the battery from the dealers swap stack.

The car would be considerably cheaper. Your battery deposit would be a lot more than people want but basically ensured enough capex to keep new batteries entering the market of rented/leased batteries.

Lambo and Ferrari might be outside the model. And top range models from any manufacturer. Any normal car would be in this framework. If you don't care about cost and delay to recharge you wouldn't want it. Trucks and ordinary mortals would really be better off.

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