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by Animats 945 days ago
It's been tried. See Better Place.[1] Battery swapping was a bet against better batteries. Even in Israel and Hawaii, where you can't drive very far, it was a losing idea.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_%28company%29

2 comments

Nio, in China, has revisited this, successfully.[1] They have about 2000 battery swap stations and claim to have done 30,000,000 battery swaps so far. They have a few demo stations in Europe.

The idea is to use smaller batteries for cheaper and lighter cars. Range is less but batteries are swappable for long trips.

[1] https://electrek.co/2023/11/21/nio-is-joining-forces-with-a-...

I live in Israel(/Palestine), and I can tell you that Better Place' failure here had very little, if anything, to do with the use battery replacement logistics.

(Of course, electric cars are not a key need in Israel anyways, the country is in dire needs of mass transit system improvement and integration - which would significantly reduce car overuse and congestion problems.)