CATL is building more than 200 battery swap stations every month | Hacker News Reader

CATL is building more than 200 battery swap stations every month

electrek.co

10 pointsbreve7 comments

BYD's second-gen flash charging is probably the biggest threat to battery swapping.

For example, the newly launched Seal 08, about $30k, 435 hp, 905 km CLTC range, can charge from 10% to 70% in 5 minutes.

And BYD is pushing very fast on both sides: building flash-charging stations, and bringing this tech down to more models.

Right now the cheapest car with this tech is the Linghui e7 550, only about $16.2k.

If swapping saves ~10m vs fast charge, swapping probably makes economic sense for light commercial like delivery vans where routes are well known and infra deployment can be optimized.

The problem is that battery swapping is no longer faster than charging, while the vehicle structure still has to sacrifice for a replaceable battery pack.

The biggest advantage of battery swapping is still that slow charging protects the battery.

BYD's flash charging will inevitably hurt the battery. Maybe by this time next year it will no longer be able to charge this fast, just like how they limited the power of older models.

Battery swapping for light commercial that has higher capacity pack and are specifically designed to be light commercial like urban last mile delivery can still be meaningfully faster, i.e. 100 kwh commuter packs charges in 10m, 200kwh charges in 20m. Swap is 5m, that 15m delta on commercial fleet level may justify swapping economics. Factor in battery depreciation, lower capex vehicle costs/financing (battery rental) and savings for every driver in every vehicle fleet, it may make sense, i.e. 500 vehicle fleet that charges 2x per day, that's 250 hours of extra operation time, i.e. you can have smaller fleet generating same $$$. The reality is also fleet power requirements are much higher, i.e. BYD flash scaled for commuter pack volumes, for dedicated commercial, probably have to size up charging infra for to sustain, so it makes sense to specialize.

Maybe future charging will charge light utility on par with swapping, maybe the numbers don't make sense now, I don't know but I do see fleet scenarios where it does, especially the choco/modular form factor for different vehicle types. Really have consider from fleet level financing, capex/opex etc. not commuter convenience/behavior. Can imagine fleet vehicles standardizing around swap format, i.e. swap infra restricted to commercial fleets where swap specifically has a few percentage cost benefits and at scale, that's enough. This is CATL, they already have 75# standardized swap pack for heavy duty truck/freight, their bean counters probably think there's business case for capturing light commercial / ride hailing standardization etc (around 25#, 35# packs).

to my little mind, it looks way easier to swap batteries... especially if you want to onboard trucks

BYD also makes trucks. In southern China, electric trucks are everywhere on the road. As far as I know, they are basically all charged by plugs, not battery swapping.

Finally a believable headline about CATL.

Next week we'll be back to CATL increasing energy density by 1 million percent with a battery that charges in 3 nanoseconds.

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