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 Rapidly becoming outdated tue to developments and 2.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.
I have no idea of your proclivity to drool, but certainly you are not a simpleton. Just because you have well documented episodes of idiocy, does not make you an idiot. Try to refrain from running naked through city streets shouting Eureka!
Almost half a century of purchasing used ICE cars and trucks, I look for under appreciated value, and repairs I am willing to do. I have replaced gas tanks, and fuel pumps, but if the engine or transmission needs major work, I usually pass. I equate the EV battery pack as the gas tank, and do not want to swap out at a quick change shop for the risk of getting a bum unit. I would consider an EV, IF battery modules were standardized(affordable) and I as the 3rd owner could choose the amount to haul around based on use. Doubt that will happen, No manufacturer has 10yr. latter, 3rd owner, in mind, nor should they, from a business performance perspective.
“I equate the EV battery pack as the gas tank, and do not want to swap out at a quick change shop for the risk of getting a bum unit”
Well you could also end up with a tank of diesel when you asked for gasoline:
https://www.wcvb.com/article/who-pays-when-gas-station-mixes-up-unleaded-diesel-gas-damaging-your-car/42436512
https://www.newsweek.com/drivers-trend-gas-station-diesel-gasoline-fuel-1733270
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/gas-station-sells-diesel-gas-pumps/
They could also simply swap out the freight onto a fully charged platform.
Figuring that out makes you less of a moron than you are perceived to be.
Car companies care about what the cars they are selling look like. They need to be different from other car companies’ cars. These differences make battery-switching less attractive.
Trucks, OTOH, meh.
Also, trucks spew way more pollution, so swapping out makes more sense, and trucks can be standardized across companies.
What if a vehicle had both a permanently-mounted battery AND a swappable “range extender”? You know… like your phone has a built-in battery and you also maybe carry a battery bank in your bag.
Like a battery trailer you could rent for vacations. A little trailer with an extra 50-60kWh to up your range by 50%. Just need an extra charging socket at the back of your car to plug it in, along with a catchy name and a jingle so you can’t forget it…
The Cybertruck was going to have that but it was going to go in the bed, maybe the logistics of having to mount/unmount them for customers at the showrooms, and lack of showrooms, was too much of a hassle.
And the lack of demand for Wank Panzers in the first place.
China is doing it, seems like Japan is following them. I think the car companies in the US just want to make the profit off the battery sale as well. Just my 2 cents though.
Connector wear is an engineering problem that can be overcome. However, the engineers are right about structural batteries being a much lighter design. If the battery pack isn’t a structural part of the vehicle, then they need to design a structural component just to carry the insanely heavy battery, protect it from damage in a collision, and still allow swapping. That would be a heavy and expensive component.
I think there’s another unspoken reason. Performance of an electric car is heavily dependent on 3 things: Battery characteristics, motor controller, and motor. Changing to a battery pack that uses cheaper cells could result in a lower battery capacity, limiting range. Or it could result in a lower discharge capacity, limiting acceleration. Along with that it could have a lower charge capacity, risking fire if you try to quick-charge the battery. All this ignores the possibility of someone building a battery pack that isn’t even the correct voltage (or equally bad, a battery pack that’s a different chemistry and is incompatible with the onboard charge controller).
The manufacturers know that 12 seconds after they release standard swappable battery packs, the aftermarket will release cheaper off-brand packs. Some of those off-brand packs won’t work right and people will blame the OEM instead of the battery manufacturer.
The idea breaks down the first time I swap a brand new battery from my brand new EV with one that’s been in swap circulation for 3 years and 5000 discharge cycles and only has 70% of its capacity left.
Even if I can swap back eventually, that doesn’t help me right now, when I’m on a road trip and now need to make extra stops I wasn’t planning on.
you are thinking along the lines of paying for said battery when you first purchase it. I know plenty of craptacular electronics that have enough battery in the packaging to make it do some sort of holiday jingle just long enough to put proper batteries in them.
It sort of becomes like most solar panels these days. you don’t pay the full amount up front any more, you just pay a flat fee for a predetermined length of time. The tough part is of course who pays for what when say a large expensive battery gets damaged in a wreck caused by you, yet the battery is owned by say Sinclair.
I honestly think a hybrid idea would be your standard 100 mile battery setup on every car and then a swappable extendo- range battery system that allows for use on long trips quickly and easily and you pay just for Watts used.
“The tough part is of course who pays for what when say a large expensive battery gets damaged in a wreck caused by you, yet the battery is owned by say Sinclair.”
How is that different from wrecking a rental or leased car?
Pretty sure any battery like that would have been repurposed to make a power wall or rebuilt to factory fresh specs. In the unlikely case you were to get a sketchy battery I would think your car would inform you right away so you could (hypothetically) request another swap.
There are many reasons in these comments for having the main pack of a passenger vehicle be fixed and proprietary. What about standard, swappable range-extenders, like what some of the EV motorcycle outfits are doing? Storage space when you’re commuting, but you can stretch the range for longer trips.
I like your illustration Jason, and while maybe it’s not ideal for an annual membership t-shirt, I still dig it. Maybe if you just add an Autopian logo? I dunno.
I agree re: swappable batteries/standardization of course and was under the impression this has become a thing among some percentage of EV car and scooter drivers in China. While I grok what the designers/engineers are saying about why they don’t want to do it, I think the positives far outweigh the negatives in real life for consumers.
This sort of modular/standardized/intentionally swappable concept would also extend the life of EVs, since some never sell enough units for aftermarket battery packs to make economic sense (they sort of exist for i3s and Leafs, but not for Sparks and MX-30s, etc…). That alone would be a good reason for the auto industry to settle on a standard, but we all know it’s not in a manufacturer’s interest to have their products last longer.
I think the company (or is it companies?) offering swapable batteries, from vending machines for their e-bikes and scooters are a great idea. Relatively simple tech, just a step or two about a power tool battery. Great for urban dwellers too!
As for the larger more complex (and probably higher voltage) systems of other vehicles, maybe explore the idea of swapping the entire skateboard? Or are we now just into car share / rental territory?
I’ll concede that there is a standard battery pack that would work for all cars if you can tell me what the standard swappable battery spec is for cell phones. Nice easy one that, pocket-sized, no coolant connectors, low voltage.
Oh.
How about flashlights, surely we have a single standard swappable battery spec that all flashlights use? It’s literally the simplest electrical device you can have.
And yet I have flashlights that use AAA, AA, D and bespoke rechargeable battery packs.
I’ve worked on swappable EV batteries (not even a standard one, just swapping a bespoke pack in to a single vehicle) and it’s a nightmare of connectors and compromise and cables and invisible death that you’re legally liable for. So it didn’t happen.
It could work fine if you had a monopoly, or were a communist dictator, or if there weren’t a financial advantage for doing a bespoke battery that had better range/cooling/charging/packaging/structure/NVH or a better compromise thereof.
It’s like how everyone makes a 2.0 turbo four. It’s wasteful and stupid and yet loads of perfectly sensible OEMs spend hundreds of millions making their own one, for reasons that they can easily justify to their shareholders, despite it being obviously wasteful and stupid for the population as a whole. Then they replace it five years later with a new, fractionally different one.
Early cell phones also had an almost unlimited number of different plug designs. The EU has stepped in and decreed that electronics shall use USB-C, and that’s what it takes. Even new iPhones come with USB-C and the lightning plug is going away, at least in Europe.
So after 40 years cell phones have eventually got a nearly standard connector in one market? Yay!
Its not swappable batteries though. The batteries are all wildly incompatible.
Cell phones are so thin and the batteries are sometimes L shaped to fit in the available space. There will never be a standardize battery for that sort of application. You can, at least, buy third party batteries, even when they’re unique to a particular cell phone model since they sell in such high volumes, it’s practical to develop replacements.
It would be nice to find a 50 year old electric car and be able to fix it up with readily available replacement batteries because at some level they are standardized, but I don’t see that happening.
Exactly. If we can’t have a standardised battery for a small phone we aren’t going to have one for cars, because the packaging is harder and the costs way, way higher.
In 50 years you’ll be able to cobble together replacement batteries for EVs, it’s just volts in a box.
“It’s like how everyone makes a 2.0 turbo four. It’s wasteful and stupid and yet loads of perfectly sensible OEMs spend hundreds of millions making their own one, for reasons that they can easily justify to their shareholders, despite it being obviously wasteful and stupid for the population as a whole. Then they replace it five years later with a new, fractionally different one.”
“Not Invented Here”. That’s all the reason needed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here
If you already anticipate an issue, you can head it off quite easily by adding two connectors in a row. When the “outer” connector wears out, you can swap a new one in, and the “inner” connector has only seen one cycle.
That is a solution to that specific problem, but it doesn’t address the real issue—more expense and more potential failure points, for no real benefit.
Being able to be back on the road in five minutes with a full battery is a benefit. Definitely.
But is it? Fleet vehicles are rarely in use 24 hrs a day, and most last-mile delivery vehicles don’t travel that many miles a day. UPS trucks rarely travel more than 200 miles in a day. Plus, the added expense to the connectors is only one small part of the overall expense in making swappable batteries happen.
Swappable batteries are an expensive solution in search of a non-existent problem.
You could use much smaller batteries that only last half a day (+ some spare capacity), so they can be swapped while the driver is on their lunch break, Smaller batteries are lighter, save energy, make the vehicle safer overall. Lots of benefits!
That doesn’t make any sense. Additionally, most drivers don’t return for lunch; that would be wildly inefficient. If they did go back to base every 100 miles for a break, they could simply recharge, as a half-hour lunch break is enough time to recoup the miles driven in the morning.
Again, swapping batteries is completely pointless.
except for the EV industry, the delay from charging and lack of infrastructure, along with cost per mile in some instances, certainly means it is an existing problem… Still.
The infrastructure for battery-sapping would be far more expensive and would still require the power to be run to the same places. Swapping batteries adds issues while solving none.
Eh, swaps in rural areas or along Highway routes would be the best. level 1 or 2 chargers could slowly charge big batteries overnight and if managed properly the cost up front could or would be pretty small compared to DC to DC fast charging stations…at least currently.
The only way it would work is if it is used so rarely that there is no incentive to install a battery swap station at that location. It would be far less expensive to install a charging station with its own large battery, which would allow for faster charging of cars that stop at that location.
The battery swap piece provides no value. In fact, it is worse since it would only work for cars with that type of swappable battery.
But the cost of your slightly quicker road trip is that every other car, tens of millions of them, has to have a non-optimised battery, a package layout that allows access to the battery, it’s HV connectors (both of them with your scheme, and some system for automatically logging connector swap counts both the ones on your car and the ones in the rental batteries), the BMS connectors, dry coolant connectors and all the fasteners for all those things.
And just one of those things goes wrong and your car is bricked.
Plus the environment cost of all those spare compromised battery packs sitting in service stations waiting to be used. And the financial cost too.
It’s a lot of compromise for everyone else, just to save you some time. Better to just rent an EREV for road trips, or buy one if you’re always on the road, or hook up a range extender trailer. Or buy a 400 mile range EV, or in a couple of years a 600 mile range EV (that obviously won’t ever happen if the whole world has to use the same damn battery pack).
Not necessarily. If a scheme for swapping batteries is established just for delivery vehicles and taxis, then ther’s a lot of benefit.
You keep saying that there is a benefit, but you haven’t provided any.
Most delivery vehicles don’t drive enough miles to need to recharge during the day. For example – Ford says the average Transit goes 70 miles per day.
Well, yes, of course it does, but how much does the battery pack weigh? Anywhere between 250 and 500 kg, I would think. That’s not an unheard-of amount of weight change for a delivery vehicle. A person (of my size) weighs 100 kg, easily, for comparison.
Closer to the 500 kg and up, for my Bolt EV the service instructions on swapping the batteries for the recall are to ratchet strap both ends of the car to the lift, as when the battery is removed the weight shifts so dramatically the car may topple forward off the lift.
That issue can be handled if you design a vehicle for swappable batteries. But 500 kg is heavy for a battery back for a delivery van that doesn’t carry a shitdown of weight and isn’t doing a lot of kilometrage either.
Yes indeed it is! The Amazon vans use the Rivian packs which the big pack are over 700kg. The smaller Nissan NV 200’s 40kwh pack weighs about 290kg.
But a delivery van with swappable batteries does not need a 700-kg battery pack.
Neither does a van that can recharge in 10 minutes
That’s true.
Problem here is the Fast Charging setup currently reduces the number of charging cycles on the batteries quite a bit. if they were to do it this way almost entirely, then the battery being swappable would be for an entirely different reason, but none the less still important in the overall cost of ownership equation.
They are working on chemistries like lithium phosphate, and better cooling where fast charging doesn’t degrade like the early nickel manganese cobalt chemistries do.
And if we’re talking just easier swapping for maintenance, that’s just generally better design practice, and again I think GM is making progress there, hopefully others are too, modules can be replaced as they fail, and even with newer tech to improve battery life.
Kind of curious how the Solid state stuff does. It has promise.
For sure, no fires, quick charging, just worry about degredation, not just from charging but like regular vehicle noise vibration and harshness.
A lot of it has to do with all the stuff that happens underneath a road going vehicle. Dirt, oil, grease, salt, coon guts, half-eaten french fries, brake dust, tire dust, all mixed with some metal corrosion and moist leaves/vegetation. It’s a breeding ground for ick, unless you’re in the desert.
Can only imagine how poorly it would go when a battery swap station robot encounters a pack retaining bolt that has been rusted into oblivion by years of road salt.
The early Model S was designed for battery swapping, and some of them are failing at the connector, even though the battery was never swapped, so that does introduce a fail point.
I agree on standardization of modules, but swapping tech not so much.
Swapping the battery in 5 minutes, the megawatt charging systems are coming for trucks that can charge at more than twice the CCS/NACS speeds, so that fixes the long charge time issue. And the other part of it is, especially at the consumer level for cars, say I have my brand new car and I’ve taken care of the battery for the first 10,000 miles but now am going on a trip so decide to use a swap station, but I get swapped a battery with 50,000 miles on it that was always charged to 100% and drained to 5% and it fails on me 200 miles out of the gate. I’ve had a similar experience at Disney with the little cell phone battery banks you can trade in, I got a new one, worked great, traded it in for a ‘full one’ another day, had like half the capacity, it happens.
The standardization of modules I find kind of sad because that’s how they started, GM/Toyota/Ford/Honda in the 90s all used the Panasonic EV95 NiMh battery modules, variations on how many, some had 24, some had 25, but it was the same module.
Then with lithium Tesla decided to use 18650 cells because that was what they could get at the time, Nissan used different for the Leafs and GM different for the Volts, and I don’t know if it was intentionally proprietary, I think they were all just using what they had for designs, Tesla started with laptop cells in the Roadster, GM still tried to use the T-shape pack like in the EV1, and Nissan just went cheap as they could.
Then the prismatics came, and I think still kind of similar cells from LG for GM and Hyundai/Kia as they both had the recalls for fires.
And I think since then, they’re still all trying to develop the best battery tech that won’t catch fire, has high charge cycles, can be charged fast, can be charged to 100% without degredation, has good density, is good with kids, knows several commands, etc.
GM is doing replaceable modules with Ultium(not it’s real name) so that’s an improvement, but of course they’re proprietary modules, it would be nice to get back to everybody uses the same module, however many they want but I think we’re still a ways off, have to figure out if sodium will work well, or solid state, or if LFP is good enough, and the best cooling, and all kinds of other considerations.
I think some companies will get there, especially if it’s like Honda and GM working together, or Toyota and Subaru, and then potentially the aftermarket will kick in like they have with lawnmower and power tool batteries, but it’s gonna be a while.
Sappable batteries are a lot like modular design in general. It appears nice on the surface, but it quickly loses its appeal once you delve into the details. Plus, all batteries are “swappable.” The method of swapping just reflects how often the swap needs to happen, just like an engine or transmission.
All the connection points and packaging cost more on a swappable part, and if it only needs to happen over 100- 200k miles, there isn’t much point in dealing with the limitations of a more easily swappable part. Battery swapping requires a substantial amount of infrastructure, and if battery technology improves (with increased range and reduced charging times), it is likely to become obsolete very quickly.
A huge issue is also the idea of buying a car that is 100% dependent on the ability to rent a battery. Owning the car but not the battery isn’t something worth considering any more than it would be with the engine in an ICE model. If you don’t want to own a battery, lease the car.
All resources put into battery swapping are just resources wasted.
Relevant XKCD:
https://m.xkcd.com/927/
For the same reasons that you don’t want to own the EV battery, these companies don’t want to own them either.
^^^^This^^^^
Surprisingly, no mention about chinese company NIO, that’s been swapping batteries for years already. They have over 3000 swapping stations across China and I believe many taxicabs in Beijing are battery-swappable.
The amount of money NIO is losing makes them a cautionary tale for battery swapping
I was about to mention Nio too, but yeah, they are losing money hand over fist.
I don’t think it’s purely down to their battery swapping tech alone, but I imagine building and maintaining all those battery swapping stations can’t be cheap.
I worked on a harmonization committee for electrical products years ago and what I learned is that NO ONE wants things to be standardized EXCEPT the end user. That’s why every single battery in every electric vehicle is different and will continue to be different. Now, think about AA batteries in a flashlight. Many brands, competitive prices. And it’s that competition that manufacturers hate, because it makes the market efficient and allows for competition, and the consumer gets a better deal. Manufacturers these days already have you over a barrel with their crappy software, full of bugs and spyware, ever updated and designed to make your life miserable. Your best bet is to buy mass market cars that attract the aftermarket to build replacement parts, which you’ll be able to buy for a good price.
I agree with this and I also think inertia is a big piece of it for manufacturers.
Standardization may be easier and cheaper down the line for manufacturers, but right now there’s been a huge investment in a proprietary system and sticking with the status quo has fewer short term costs. And nobody wants to accept the largely unquantifiable risk of accepting a standard without some kind of external force like an industrywide compact or government regulation.
This. I’m on several industry committees and everyone is glad to talk about standards until it becomes their responsibility to adhere to one…and then everything falls apart. Nobody wants their product/widget/software to become a commodity, where everyone makes something 95+% the same as everyone else and profit margins are so slim as to barely exist, so making things proprietary or difficult to repair imbues that “value added” property to each company’s product. Any EV manufacturer embracing swappable batteries is simultaneously making things easier and harder for the consumer, because that battery pack can quickly become a race to the bottom for third-parties and send that EV manufacturer into insolvency.
I think there’s a few reasons that scare most companies away from battery swapping that are not necessarily design and standardization, which while a hurdle, is possible to overcome. I think the largest ones boil down to two main issues:
1: Being stuck with dead batteries. When a company sells and EV to a consumer and the warranty is up, disposal of the dead battery is on the car owner, not the company. Dealing with swappable batteries means the company will inevitably be stuck holding dead or nearly dead batteries, they take up space, have lengthy safety requirements for transport, and recycling of Lithium batteries is not widespread enough. This turns an already tough logistics game (sizes of batteries, charging them, infrastructure, fire safety, etc) into a much more complicated one for a company at large.
2: Legal liability. At least in the US, everyone seems to have a lawyer on speed dial to milk money out of a company the second someone is even slightly wronged, so you have to imagine that battery swapping stations live in a gray area of liability. If any EV using swappable batteries has a *thermal incident* the first call will be the fire department, and second is a lawyer. It takes one failed court case to open the floodgates of damages claims over battery swap stations ruining a car. Even if they are all bogus, they are very expensive to fight in court en masse.
I think #1 is true but I’m doubtful #2 holds water. Gas stations don’t have any serious protection from lawsuits but they’re all over, despite a lot of them having such low profit margins they eke out money from scratchoffs and energy drinks.
It wouldn’t be hard to follow a similar model for battery swap stations as gas stations, where operators are independent franchises which are responsible for a suit from a fire.
That doesn’t mean that #2 isn’t a factor, but it’s more likely to come up when investor vibes are concerned. They’re comfortable with the risks of owning a piece of some gas stations, but a new concept is scary, and fear of lawsuits is a way to say no without really running the numbers.
I could write a few pages, but I won’t because J-Torch has covered most of it very nicely.
At this point, I’m about 95% convinced battery swapping hasn’t happened for purely IP reasons. In an uncertain EV future, what incentive did manufacturers have to make any sort of modularization a possibility? None. Just look at the trajectory of something as simple as audio head units, which went from almost-universal DIN acceptance to almost everyone using proprietary layouts.
Batteries are largely the same. The funny part was the early EV rollouts where they touted the modularity of the “skateboard architecture” and then proceeded to build cars along those lines, but whoops we forgot to make the battery easily accessible but don’t worry, it has an 8-year warranty on it. The closest that I’ve heard of is the F-150 Lightning where the battery can be dropped from below with just several bolts, but even then it’s just for servicing, not easy replacement.
Today, just look how long it took to get a more standardized charging infrastructure. Nobody really wants to work together until it becomes necessary.
If we can shift the biggest “pain point” of EV (or even PHEV) ownership to a swappable system, then I might be on board. For now, I’m gas — gasoline for the car and natural gas for the grill. Who wants to swap propane tanks, anyway?! /s
The IP and modularity argument has always been one I’ve struggled to accept for the simple reason that different cars have different wheelbases and widths, not to mention charging hardware, inverters, and operating voltages. Sure a standardized pack sounds incredible, but that would lead to one of two results: All cars being built to the same size, or some cars having much smaller batteries than they currently do. Having the packs be anything other than a single-piece pack that swaps in and out very quickly increases swap time and complexity.
The closest we get to this is what GM does with ultium (RIP that name) and other companies attempting to do similar module based design, where you can tailor the contents of the pack to any vehicle from a bolt (upcoming 2nd gen bolt should be Ultium based) to a 200kWh, dual stack, 3500 pound behemoth battery for a Hummer EV or Escalade IQ, using fundamentally similar blocks. The modular pack system has the potential advantage of reducing a full pack replacement into a module-by-module replacement, reducing parts cost, but the removal and disassembly of the entire pack is still required, and there is a lot of labor in doing it.
There really is no magic bullet in the EV battery world. The best we can hope for is higher peak charging speeds, higher overall vehicle efficiency, and longer longevity of our packs with reduced manufacturing costs to the point that the drawbacks of EVs will still exists, but it’s pro’s outweigh them to such a degree that they are the better default option for general transportation.
Good insight, I also saw you other reply below and it all makes sense. I’m trying to take the perspective of a CEO or even a regulator from 10-15 years ago — asking “What do we need this business to look like?” and obviously today it sounds like we’re pretty far down some diverging roads, more than would allow for any easy pivots. I’m far from knowledgeable enough on the technical side to try to explain how it’s supposed to work, but if the industry goes in any direction other than standardization in the coming 10-20 years, I’d be surprised.
I guess the main reason behind being anti swap goes a bit deeper than packaging optimization.
Having a standard battery means that the vehicles themselves are going to be quite restricted in minimum size. for example, Ford would very easily be able to do something with the F-150 since it sells so many, but would it bother building out the infrastructure for a battery with the right dimensions for an eMustang? Probably not. That would mean that the car would have to be sized for the battery rather than the other way around.
Secondly, it would restrict battery innovation at a time when they’re still developing quickly. You build your tech around LI-ion, but two years down the line that gets superseded. You want to replace the batteries in your swap stations with the new technology, but does that work with all the cars on the road?
Thirdly, due to their costs the battery is about half of the vehicle these days. That’s a huge amount of cash for EV swap stations to have tied up in batteries stacked up on a shelf waiting for cars.
All solid points. One mitigant might be 5-10 smaller modular batteries that could be combined in various layouts and quantities to fit the car (which Torch covered). But that requires a lot of manufacturing coordination and I don’t see that happening among multiple brands short of a government mandate. For whatever reason, I also don’t see any executive orders pushing advancement of EV tech coming down the pike for a while…
I somewhat touched on that topic in my above comments, but modular battery units to conglomerate into a wider range of vehicle types relies on some very very large assumptions around vehicle charging systems, inverters, motors and controller operating voltages and currents, and lots of support electronics. The reality is a standard would have to be created around any set of battery modules, which would require a lot serious redesigns for any vehicle, all to result in a less optimized, less energy dense and efficient package.
Also, to swap multiple modular units would take much longer than a single sized pack with defined mounting, and the complexity would increase to a degree as to make it objectively worse than DC fast charging in most advanced EVs, such that the effort to make a modular swappable pack would be better spent on a more efficient, faster charging and higher capacity car.
This. There isn’t even a standard voltage.
Maybe someday, when motor technology has fully matured and battery energy density doesn’t require building a battery that consumes the entire undercarriage of the vehicle. We’re a long way off from that.
Why isn’t battery swapping a thing. The answer, as always, is money. Why would a company want to own a rapidly outdated and consumable battery? There just isn’t enough easy money in this endeavor.