One of the interesting things about my job is that I get to talk to engineers and product planners and designers and other Important People in the car industry. And, after well over a decade of carefully crafting a persona that many people would call, perhaps derisively, an “idiot” or more charitably, a “drooling simpleton,” I’m often in a place where I can offer suggestions or ideas to these sorts of people, and they’re very often surprisingly willing to listen to me, or at least pretend to.
One of the ideas that I can’t get out of my head and have brought up to these sorts of people on numerous occasions is the concept of battery swapping for electric vehicles. And, incredibly, at least to me, every single Important Person I have spoken with in the EV industry has told me, in pretty clear, straightforward terms, that battery swapping is a Bad Idea.
That may be why I was happy to see that Mitsubishi Fuso is planning a battery-swapping program in Japan, specifically for its line of eCanter commercial trucks. The swapping program is being done in conjunction with Ample, an American-based company that seems focused on modular batteries and battery swapping – two ideas that I have been championing for years.Â
I really love this approach; I’ve never really been thrilled with the idea of actually owning a battery in an EV– why do I want to have a major structural part of my car be something that is 1. Rapidly becoming outdated tue to developments and 2. Arguably a consumable, even if they do last a nice long while – and I’ve always thought that standardizing battery sizes and connectors could lead to more competition and commoditization of batteries that would lead to less cost to consumers, and that’s whose side I’m on, anyway.
Ample does seem to have this approach, at least based on what I saw on their website. Their partnership with Mitubishi Fuso is focused on the last-mile, in-city trucking and delivering market, and uses the Mistubishi eCanter truck as the platform. These trucks, introduced in 2023, have driving ranges between 62 and 200 miles or so, and EV light-duty trucks like these can take between a few hours and up to 10 hours to recharge using conventional means.
This battery swapping plan would reduce that time to minutes, five minutes if this diagram proves to be prophetic:
Oh, one quick aside about the eCanter; on Mitsubishi-Fuso’s site for the eCanter, the company has a funny way of naming its wheelbase options. Look at this:
So we have Short, Long, and Extra Super Long! That last one feels just a little too exuberant, but I like it. They could have done Extra or Super, but someone there was feeling it enough to say screw it, we’re doing both. Extra Super, mothertruckers!
Okay, back to the battery swapping plan. It seems the battery swapping stations will be built according to Ample’s current designs, and the trucks will be adapted to be compatible with Ample’s modular batteries, with a trial on public roads scheduled for this winter.
I’m excited by this, but also reminded of what all these CEOs and CTOs and engineers have told me over the years: if you tightly integrate a custom battery pack into an EV, everything can be lighter and more efficient; they’re worried about connector life with all the cycles of fluid/electric connection and disconnection; and they just all seem to be down on the ideas of standardizing altogether. But why?
I think while they have valid points – connector life is an issue, of course, and yes, you can design a more efficient overall vehicle with a custom, highly integrated battery pack – a lot of the resistance may come down to a certain sort of pervasive engineering hubris. Everyone thinks they can do it a little better than everyone else, and while they may all be right, maybe it just doesn’t really matter all that much.
Maybe people would rather have EVs that don’t become unsellable paperweights over time in rare and outdated in probably most cases, or would rather adjust how much battery they haul around based on their dynamically-changing needs [Ed Note: The weight change would alter the vehicle’s dynamics, which opens up a whole new can of worms. -DT], or have more options for battery replacement instead of a slightly more efficient, integrated battery design.
I think a last-mile delivery truck platform like these eCanters is an ideal test case for this sort of modular, swappable battery, because it’s a platform that would never really need structural batteries in the first place. Why not make them swappable, especially if the batteries are just big boxes slung between frame rails?
Maybe all those CTOs and engineers and everyone else are right, and I’m a big, sloppy moron with a lot of bad ideas. Fine. I’ve accepted that. But is Mitsubishi-Fuso an idiot, too? Or is it possible there’s some merit to the idea of standardized and swappable batteries? I guess we’ll see how it goes, and then I’ll just wait for all those bigshots in the EV world to send me apologetic fruit baskets. I’ll hold my breath.
*At a glance*, this seems expensive, risky and sort of minimally profitable, if at all profitable.
This seems more like something brought about by regulation or demand after seeing somewhere else succeed at it.
I think swappable batteries would be great, especially for trucks. They were certainly awesome in cell phones before they screwed us out of that. Unfortunately, manufacturers don’t want to be in the business of producing commodities and all the downward price pressure that comes with that, which is what the battery packs would become in a universally swappable scenario. When your battery pack goes bad, they want to charge you $7K for a replacement that you can’t buy from anyone else.
The connection issue is easy to solve by adding one extra sacrificial cable that gets swapped out every 100 connections. Same can be done with fasteners.
I am 100% for battery swapping. The counter arguments can all be designed out.
Wait follow my thought here. You know they say it takes 10 minutes to change a battery with those sots of systems. And you have to load a truck at a hub location…. so what if you change it out when that truck comes in for a secondary load. In Japan they often ar eloading up for a region and then coming back for a second load. The idea that you get everything in one trip like in the US is not a thing.
I lived in Japan for 10 years and the Kuroneko shipping depo had the same small trucks cycle through more than you would believe.
My colleague in Europe has a NIO, and can’t say enough good things about battery swapping (and the vehicle overall).
Welcome to capitalism, you must be new here. Of course everyone thinks that, and we enjoy a bewildering variety of vehicles to choose from on the market because of it. That’s not to say I don’t support standardization, and I expect more will come as the industry matures, but it’s still the Wild West as far as EV development goes, despite the fact early lithium ion EVs are almost old enough to vote. Anytime standards are mentioned, I just think of the classic XKCD comic: xkcd: Standards
As an engineer, I see their practical points too: the car can’t use the battery pack as part of the chassis if that pack must be easily droppable. That means having a structure to support both the car sans-battery, plus the stand-alone structure of the battery itself, plus all the associated quick-swap mounts (which must be strong enough to withstand a collision, but also handle being made and remade thousands of times, which most bolts aren’t). The weight and packaging of all that are not as much of a concern on large trucks like the Fusos, which still use a typical heavy truck chassis.
Infrastructure is probably the biggest issue. We barely have a passable EV charging network in the US, forget about fully-automated robotic swapping stations. Each one would likely hold six-figure $ worth of battery inventory at a time. Super easy target for vandals/thieves, not to mention maintaining uptime if the system has an error. You can still charge with a typical wall dispenser or DC fast charger, but the swappable battery is only worth it if you can use it. China has a leg up here, though I’m not sure how widely available their pack swapping stations are, or if it’s more of an inner-city thing. Taiwan’s Gogoro system works well because Taiwan is tiny, and much of the population was already used to driving small 2-stroke scooters, so the battery capacity need is much smaller than a car.
I’ve though the Gogoro system could work well in the US if you could dock a small swappable battery into a BEV with a much larger standard pack. Think like the propane tank swapping stations at grocery stores. You aren’t getting a full 100+ KWh battery, but say you get 30miles worth or something to get you home or over to a larger DC fast charger. You could also just keep that swappable battery and use it for a little extra range, or take it out and use it as a portable power brick, like you can with power tool batteries. I’m thinking something that would fit in a trunk.
Of course, the issue there is getting sufficient power density to make it worth it, the ability to cool the battery if people leave it in their trunk all day in Arizona, etc, but keeping the swappable battery small would help lessen the automation complexity if it’s light enough for one person to lift and manage.