| An interesting way to address that is to only swap in new batteries. That would of course be completely impractical with current rechargeable batteries, but who says the batteries have to be rechargeable? I remember a few years ago a company that was developing an aluminum-air battery was demonstrating an EV using it. They were getting something like 1200 km range (about 750 miles), which is enough that the average driver would only need to do a battery swap every couple of weeks. Aluminum-air batteries react the aluminum in the battery with oxygen from the atmosphere producing aluminum oxide. Once the aluminum is all used up the battery is dead, but it can be processes similar to the way aluminum ore is processed to recover the aluminum and use that to make a new battery. Processing aluminum ore takes a lot of energy so this isn't something you'd actually do on site at the battery swap stations. You'd ship the spent batteries to someplace with really cheap electricity (i.e., the same kind of places we put aluminum smelting facilities). Compared to the current gasoline distribution system this would be more work, because it would be two way. With gasoline, it has to be shipped from the refinery to the gas station and after that it is the atmosphere's problem. With swappable aluminum-air batteries you'd have both distributing the new batteries to the swap stations and distributing spent batteries to the smelting and battery making facilities. |