[Qwertious]

>With standardization -- how is a battery swapping network any different from a gas station network?

Because if one bad actor screws you over (e.g. a faulty battery that lies about its charge status), then you're potentially out thousands of dollars. Saying "with standardization" glosses over possible decades of cracking down on every dipshit that passes off dodgy batteries and makes thousands of dollars a day.

Also, you need lots of extra batteries everywhere, to swap with. Hopefully everyone has the exact same form-factor of battery too, vehicle design flexibility be damned, because otherwise you'll need multiple stockpiles of batteries.

Also, making batteries modular is expensive and adds weight, which reduces practical range.

Battery swapping also doesn"t have a good path to adoption, since it's capex-heavy and at first is operating in a world where nobody uses it. In contrast, EV charging infrastructure is everywhere as long as there's a power socket.

Also, adding a charger for your swappable-battery car costs pennies, so lots of people won't even use their car's battery a swapping feature (which is really bad for battery swapping outlets). If most people only use the battery-swap at Christmas and $HOLIDAY, then the networks could be underprovisioned during those spikes and overprovisioned in the other 363 days of the year.

[swagempire]

So even though there would be incredible benefits -- we just should not try according to this position.

I mean hasn't every great engineering achievement in human history basically been about overcoming a litany of "it can't be done because"? We would still be in caves with this approach you suggest.

[Anticlockwise]

I understand this feeling, and feel it frequently with other comments, but don't see the comment you're replying to as the best example of that. Their list of reasons are mostly not overcomable with "great engineering achievement" - they're mostly economics. If you don't see a path to overcoming the economics, then you can engineer all you want and it won't succeed in our society.

So maybe a better contribution would be to ask what would drive successful economics of battery swapping? It seems like one critical piece which could happen on its own and would then potentially enable battery swapping is battery standardization. Yes, standardization reduces engineering options, as the parent suggests, but it also makes consumer lives much much better. I've got some non-standard batteries on my ebike and it probably puts a much shorter time limit on the bike's life than I'd prefer.

Standardization doesn't have to reduce engineering options as much if there are a handful of form factors. That's what we've seen with AA, AAA, 9V,etc. We should be aiming for a small set of form factors and connectors that enable sufficient engineering options.

[Qwertious]

Battery swapping schemes have already been tried, theyy all flopped. I don't mind if people attempt it again, as long as they don't fall into the "it failed because it wasn't large-enough scale" trap.

And I'm sure battery-swaps are possible, they're just a really dumb idea. Engineering isn't about what can be done, they're about building the best solution to the problem - and that includes not overengineering it.

As the saying goes: any idiot can build a bridge that stands up, but only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stands up.

[erik_seaberg]

The trouble is that power outlets are mostly installed indoors. Many parking lots aren't wired at all, even for lighting.