Roberson, W. (2024, January 29). It works for scooters: Can battery swapping work for electric cars? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/billroberson/2024/01/28/it-works-for-scooters-can-battery-swapping-work-for-electric-cars/?sh=11dc48c37fad

The US infrastructure for charging electric vehicles remains underdeveloped and most people still have “range anxiety” when they think about driving electric vehicles. Tesla has been on the market for more than 10 years and has developed their own charging network. In the meantime, other manufacturers fought against electric cars and then had to play catchup and develop their own models. The result is that not a lot of chargers have been installed around the country, yet there are gas stateions on every corner still.  One technology that might help is battery-swapping. It works well for electric scooters in Europe, but has not been proven yet for cars. If US car companies can agree on a standard battery, battery swap stations around the country could allow people to “fill up” in a matter of minutes in stead of charging for an hour. The article talks about the major challenges to this happening; companies have already developed their own battery designs and shapes, and major infrastructure would need to be developed around battery-swap stations. They suggest that in China where the government mandates everything, it can be done more easily. In the US, the market decides what the market wants however.

 

This article raised the idea of a technology that can solve a big problem in the electric vehicle market, but at the same time raised several issues that are enormous obstacles to it becoming reality. Imagine what would have to happen so that any electric car used the same battery? Then imagine what would need to happen so that you could pull into a battery-station and just get a new battery swapped out. Would they use robots to do it? Would a battery-station have 10, 20, 100 batteries just sitting there getting charged at all times in case people stop by for a swap? Batteries are large and expensive, so this seems like a highly unlikely solution to the EV market.