| > Here's a way to try to work around things like range limitations in EVs and long charging times, by setting up infrastructure to swap batteries in and out I think it's for the most part a non-problem. Most EV users don't wait to charge. They charge at idle times and start the day with a fully charged car. The need to charge quickly is far rarer for an EV user than going to the gas station for a gas/diesel user. > and your first thought is about maintaining the value of your vehicle, not the utility of the system. No, my concern is how is the system going to maintain its own utility without crashing and burning economically. Because a battery is an expensive component and ultimately has to be paid for somehow, there's no ignoring that. > Presumably they are all leased from the vehicle company. Think "Battery as a service", not "This is mine". The problem I see is that a battery isn't a car. With a car you can walk around it and say "you've clearly crashed into something here, we'll send you the bill for the repairs". A battery is a much more obscure component that's easier to abuse and harder to determine it's been abused. Worse, it's a component that can suffer grievous damage by complete accident -- leave it discharged in the sun for a day or two and that'll probably hurt quite a bit. > I don't know, this seems an odd detail to fixate on though. How so? A car is for moving people around. People sometimes want to go far. So what happens when you take stuff you don't own into a country where that company doesn't exist? Is the company going to fine you for charging it with an unauthorized charger? Is the utility compromised because a good part of the value was the battery swap proposition and you can't do that anymore outside of wherever this particular company has hardware? > And does that particularly matter to you? It matters for the survival of the system. If I don't own the battery, it's not my problem that it breaks. Therefore I have less incentive to take care of it. But the battery in the end must be paid for, so either the swap company eats the loss and goes bankrupt, or fines customers until getting a terrible PR and goes bankrupt from lack of customers. |