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Comment by c9lgPZqHNGdC1V1 | Hacker News Reader

If anything, Nio battery swap stations would allow car users to swap to newer types of battery as they become available. I say this knowing Nio is one of CATL's most important partners[1].

[1] https://eletric-vehicles.com/catl/catl-calls-nio-an-irreplac...

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In a well designed urban environment where cars have space for 2-3 modular batteries with swapping capabilities, I see no reason why taxis etc. need to carry battery payload > 150 km of range needed for local use, which would mean better fuel efficiency as well. Battery swapping done right is integral to this

Sorry, but I giggled at this. A well designed urban environment would have no cars.

Frankly - I agree with this take.

If anything - my opinion at this point is that cars were a mistake in vehicle sizing caused by internal combustion engines.

For the vast, vast majority of ubran transit, something akin to a bike in size seems to make more sense.

We see this already in urban regions in India/Asia where scooters are the predominate transportation method, and I think even traditional scooters are heavy enough to be problematic.

But a class 2 ebike (so throttle with no need to pedal) can weigh as little as 40lbs (20kg), and go 30 miles at 20mph.

It's insane that we're not designing urban transit for bikes at this point. Much better density, much safer, much easier to store and park, much cheaper to operate and license.

Cars,those urban monstrosities the vehicles that weigh over 25 times their payload and take up 20 times the space on the roads.

Should I adjust the figures for American sizes?

Should I also add that they are engineered to travel at speeds over 120 mph and usually ply the trade environments where 30 mph is a dangerous speed?

Amazing machines. Can't wait till I can buy something a bit bigger that can also travel to other planets

but you/stuff still needs to go from a to b. taxis (or individual self driving pods) should however be the future of public transport.

They simply lack the required space density.

In an ideal world, yes. But the only way to move forward is somehow modifying the existing world for better, step by step.

That'd be an interesting situation. They'd probably replace their fleet of batteries gradually, so with each swap sometimes you'd get upgraded, sometimes downgraded. Your range and home charging curves would change with the batteries, and Nio would have to update the battery management software when it puts in a different battery type.

But over time, you'd get upgraded on average without having to pay for a new battery, as long as Nio kept updating to keep its batteries competitive.

Nio already has a service to swap to higher capacity battery if you want to go on a long road trip etc. It prices its cars according to battery capacity so even people that chose lower capacity car on purchase still have the option to swap to a higher capacity battery. Though I think the main use for battery swap technology will be for commercial trucking and if I recall correctly Chinese government and OEM are working on standardisation for that so all those truck batteries are swappable no matter which company builds the battery.

This is in fact the main argument to me why swaps would never work at all, economically: the "state" of the battery is a significant part of the value of the car. Being swapped to a worse one makes you several thousand dollars worse off.

It only works in a leasing scenario, and everyone hates those.

I used to own a truck whose fair market value would double, temporarily, whenever I filled the tank.

How's that any different than putting new tires on a shitbox?

I think you'd need a contract where you buy (or lease) the car without a battery and lease/rent the battery separately. With some guaranteed offer for a battery with minimum spec X at maximum price Y when you exit the battery program. Preferably, not a mandatory offer, because one hopes specs go up and prices go down over time.

Then have you pay something per month for having a battery (maybe depends on the specific battery installed), something per kWh for charge used, plus a rebate per kWh for charge added. Or roll it into usage tiers, whatever.

There's lots of people that love leasing cars. I don't understand it, but it makes a lot of people happy?

5 minute swap is not needed for this.

Well, if it degrades to 90% after three years, and let’s extrapolate to 81% after another two to three years, then a battery swap in 5 minutes might be reasonable to do instead of charging once every three to five years or so. I guess it depends on the quality and retained capacity on the batteries being swapped in.

The vast majority of charging is done at home, though. Five-minute-charging/swapping is basically a gimmick to show off to your friends, and only really sees (questionable) use during that once-a-year road trip.

The main value in these technologies is to shut up the "But sometimes I want to drive for 20 hours without being forced to take even a single 30-minute break!" pseudo-argument as to why an EV is "impossible" for their lifestyle. Same with the Lucid Air and its 1000km range: basically zero people truly need it, but it needs to exists in order to drag the last few holdouts into the future.

When my road trip is in negative temperatures, I appreciate not having to be in the cold for too long. I think the bigger adoption issue is thoughts of scaling the charging stations. If there’s a line of cars at a liquid fuel pump, one can still get fuel in twenty or thirty minutes. If there’s a line of four cars at every charger and every car takes 15 minutes to charge on average, that’s an hour before you can start.

> Well, if it degrades to 90% after three years, and let’s extrapolate to 81% after another two to three years, then a battery swap in 5 minutes might be reasonable

eh? are you saying that something that is done once every 5 years has to be done inside 5 minutes? I strongly disagree.

> charging once every three to five years or so

Um, that's not how charging works at all.

That’s not how sentences or quotations work at all.

> Well, if it degrades to 90% after three years, and let’s extrapolate to 81% after another two to three years,

That sounds like a phone battery, not an EV battery. Modern EVs should last 15-20 years before seeing significant degredation.

That was assuming, based on their recharge count, daily 10% to 98% rapid charging. You’d only see that in a vehicle of this range if it’s being used as like a courier vehicle or moving billboard. Pretty much the actual worst cases.

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