Liking the auto battery swap idea from China
The way I see it, it’s a good tech demo but practically, it doesn’t really save you much time. You are also required to take a battery lease to use the stations.
Saw that. Looks like it takes more time to complete the switch over than it would just fast charging. Plus it looks like you have to sit and wait in the car.
No thanks. Just big banks of 30+ 350kw fast chargers please.
It takes less time, circa 5 minutes if it’s available when you pull up.
However I agree with your point in that I’d take a bank of 350kw chargers which any car can use.
Did you watch the video?
Perfect for cities, flat owners and those that cannot charge overnight at home and offer batteries to suit the driving.
Not sure I agree with that take. Cars spend 90% of their time parked, it’s quicker, easier and cheaper to charge them while they are parked. Moving the chargers to the cars is going to be a better solution than swapping £15k batteries every few days.
Those swap stations also don’t swap in a fully charged battery, it’s only 90% and you have to take a battery lease as you can’t own the battery if you keep swapping it for another one.
Yes, I did. If it takes longer to change the battery than to fast charge it, and is less convenient to do so (can't go get a coffee while it's going it), how is it better than just charging a battery?
It is faster but your last point hits the nail on the head for me. You have to sit in the car while it changes so in practice you don’t actually save any time over a car/charger with a decent 800V system (or Tesla who allows 625A @ 400V).
Or put it another way, after 4 hours driving, you swap the pack, then you have to park up so you can use the toilet anyway. In that total time, you could have just charged to 80-90%.
Bjorn does that (admittedly scientific) ‘how fast can you drive 1000km’ test, it’s barley any faster using the swap stations than it is charging a similar car like an EV6 or Tesla. Incidentally the EVs are not that much slower than the PHEVs these days because the limiting factors are starting to become the person driving the car rather than the car.
I don’t know that’s all I recall seeing on a news report. I would assume selling in Japan?
I guess so but Japanese EV sales are nonexistent, even Tesla has failed to make any sizeable ground in Japan.
I cant see it ever being a commercial success.
