243 - The Battery Swap Episode

Gary:

Hi, I'm Gary, and this is EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles, and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today, we'll be looking at the concept of battery swapping in electric vehicles. Before we start, I want you to let you know I'll probably be running a mid-season roundtable episode this season, as well as the usual end of season one.

So, what topics do you want to hear about, and who would you like on there? Our main topic of discussion today is battery swapping. Now, I've been in the EV game for quite a few years now, and almost without exception, the single most commonly used argument that non-electric vehicle drivers bring up when asked about why they won't go electric is charging time.

minutes and do: 1000

More modern chargers and better battery technology is now starting to reduce that time difference, but it's going to be quite unlikely that we can find a solution that matches the desired, in quotes, duration that the diehard anti-EV folks want. Or is there? Today we're going to be looking at a technology that has the possibility to blow this argument out of the water.

Not only is it a technology that has a great concept, it's actually live and in place across large parts of the Far Eastern Europe. And it's battery swapping. The idea is incredibly simple.

Each time your battery runs down to a low level, instead of heading to a charging station and plugging it in, you go to a swap station and have the complete battery automatically removed and replaced with a fully charged one. The benefit of this is that it takes a lot less time than plugging it into charging. So, is it as easy as it sounds?

What are the pitfalls, both technical and political? And how soon can we have this in the UK? The main provider of cars that fulfil this sort of requirement is NIO.

They're a Chinese company with a booming market in swap-on batteries. And to date, they've provided over a million battery swaps. Now, I did reach out to the head of power Europe at NIO to come on and chat about this, but was told that they were focused more on rolling out the tech and would be happy to come on and chat in a few seasons time.

So, bear that in mind as you hear what comes next. So, let's look at the pros and cons of battery swapping. Well, firstly, the pros.

Battery swapping is quick. With the NIO system, you park your car at a battery swap station, get out, the car will then reverse into the station, position itself correctly and start the swapping procedure. This takes around five minutes and provides you with a fully charged battery at the end of the five minutes.

The car then drives out from the swap station where you can then take it back. So, it's a quick, simple, easy process. Secondly, the battery swaps can now change the size of the battery.

Initially, if you bought a NIO with, for example, a 60 kilowatt-hour battery, you could only ever swap it out for another 60 kilowatt-hour battery. But now you can, via the software in the car, swap it out for a larger battery on a temporary basis. This means you can size the battery to the journey you're doing.

If you're on a short run where the 60 kilowatt-hour battery is sufficient, you just swap one for an identical one. Then, if you're intent on taking a longer journey and don't want to have to stop more than once, for example, you can swap it out for, say, a 77 kilowatt-hour battery at a swap station. And when you've done your long journey and you get back home, you swap it back to a 60 kilowatt-hour one.

And thirdly, NIO cars are not just battery swap cars. They have charge ports built in, so you can recharge them through your home charger or, indeed, a public charger if you wish. You don't have to swap the batteries if you don't want to.

It's the best of both worlds. Overnight charging at home if you want it and quick battery swapping if you don't. Now, this all sounds like a really compelling business proposition.

It meets all the requirements of the die-hard anti-EV folks for a quick charge session. And it's already a reality in the Far East and parts of Scandinavia. So, what can go wrong?

Well, let's talk a little bit about the cons. Well, the obvious one is that you can only swap out a battery for another battery that fits, which means you can't currently swap a NIO battery for, say, an MG5 battery or a Kia battery or a Hyundai battery or a Jaguar battery. Only NIO currently offer battery swapping functionality.

So, this limits the usefulness of the idea unless you want to stay within the NIO ecosystem. Unlike public charging where every car can use every charger. Yes, I know this isn't strictly true with the Zoe that runs AC and the Chademo Leaf and Kia Soul, but generally it's accurate.

With battery swapping, it's limited to cars that have the right swappable battery designed in the right way. So, this limits usefulness. And the chances of multiple OEMs getting together and creating a single standard where they can all do battery swapping is...

well, it might happen, but if it does, it's going to be many, many years in the future. And secondly, there's a lack of swap stations. The swap stations themselves look not unlike car washes.

They're around the same size and they contain all the equipment needed for a swap. But these stations need to be built somewhere at a specific cost and they need to be connected to a high power electricity source so that the batteries inside them can be charged. Now, thirdly, there's the batteries themselves.

While they have standard sizes and fittings, they also need to be plentiful enough to deal with the swapping capabilities and requirements. Now, I spoke with a representative of NIO at a conference last year and they... told me that each battery swap station contains at least 12 batteries on site.

Imagine the situation where there are 1 million neo battery swap vehicles on the road alongside a hundred thousand swap stations. So this means you will need a total of 2. 2 million batteries to accommodate all those cars and swaps.

Now I don't know about you but I think that given that the largest source of carbon in an EV is the battery, having to make an additional 1. 2 million batteries on top of the 1 million that are in the cars, that doesn't sit right with me. It seems wrong somehow.

Is that just me? Fourthly, what's the actual business case for this? Now I've spoken before about the fact that the reason wet fueling happens so quickly is because it's a bit like a prostate exam or a cervical smear.

It's not something you want to spend a lot of time doing nor is it something you want to happen that often. It's also a serial activity. You can't refuel your ICE car and do something else at the same time.

Whereas charging is a parallel activity that allows you to use the time you're charging to do something else, even if it's just sitting in your car scrolling social media. Surveys routinely show that the vast majority of people charge their cars when at home or overnight. And for those that don't, there are alternative solutions such as workplace charging, destination charging, payment charging.

It's a relatively small proportion of people who need to do a quote quick charge of less than a few minutes and get on their way. Is there really a large enough market for battery swaps in the UK to make this worth the huge investment needed? Not to mention the limited number of cars that can actually perform this.

So let's talk about a couple of takeaways from this. In an ideal world every car would have been designed to have the battery swapped out when needed and this would remove a hundred percent of the issue related to not having home charging, not having enough range and not being as quick to charge as a fossil fuel car. Unfortunately this didn't happen.

So we now have companies who are trying battery swapping but on a much smaller scale. Personally I have resource issues with battery swapping. Each swap station swap batteries waiting for it that means potentially 12 times the battery requirements of current cars.

s a Model Y rival sometime in: 2025

It's expected to launch at a price of around £40,000. It should come equipped with 900 volt architecture with three battery pack sizes giving ranges of 344, 454 or 620 miles. Take those ranges with a pinch of salt.

Initially in the UK there will be no battery swapping functionality. However the car is designed to work fully with that functionality if battery swap stations ever get installed here. It's not super easy to find information on the NIO website but my understanding is that for vehicles with the battery swap enabled the purchase price doesn't include the battery which is leased separately similar to how some of the earlier Renault Zoe's were sold.

So this allows the ability to do the size upgrade for longer trips that I mentioned earlier. So what do we think? Is battery swapping a good idea or not?

Well let me know. Info at evmusings. com It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with you listeners.

ETEC T electric semi truck in: 2025

If your regular routes are under 250 miles then get a battery that deals with that range or that can handle that range. Bigger batteries are more expensive so sizing your battery appropriately will save costs in the long term. I'm sure Sam Clark will be glad to hear that Renault have a truck he can use on his electric freightway project.

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