[moistly]

NIO's battery swapping is the future, IMO. It's faster, while still allowing opportunity to hit the washroom & candy isle at the station. Batteries will be tested with every swap, ensuring failing cells are detected extremely early. Enables battery companies to maintain ownership, which they desperately want because it guarantees their raw materials supply. Eliminates the need to run new electrical capacity to every house and neighbourhood. It's a much, much better solution.

[m463]

IMHO battery swapping - especially for passenger cars - will go nowhere.

I know many many EV drivers and I've known nobody who cares about this.

This seems to me about as likely as changing a car windshield instead of cleaning it, or swapping tires instead of airing them up.

Now EV charger reliability is a big deal. I had a leaf with a smaller battery and it was extremely challenging to go on long trips with it. And everything would grind to a halt if a fast charging station didn't work.

By the way: evgo - very reliable. chargepoint - very reliable. Blink - fast charging never ever worked.

Also, these systems usually had only two chargers per location which was terribly risky to depend on.

On the other hand, tesla did everything right. Cars have decent range. Chargers are very strategically placed. And chargers at each location are plentiful - sometimes to the point of overkill.

[nradov]

That can only be the future if manufacturers agree on a common standard battery form factor. If every company has a different incompatible battery then there will never be enough stations to eliminate range anxiety.

[moistly]

Or if mandated, like seat belts, air bags, emissions, etc.