Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Anticlockwise 952 days ago
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.