[xwolfi]

In France we had this big plan to swap batteries near instantly at the charging station, like we did with horses 300 years ago (but it's an old idea since electrical batteries were used to power vehicles everywhere), and tested it in Israel of all places with Renault... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company) . Didn't work but maybe that's one idea ? Now if only we could standardize this...

[m463]

Tesla figured out how to do it and implemented it.

Problem is, nobody wanted it. They would rather wait to charge than turn in their personal battery, and later come back for it.

Would you want it? Would you turn over your decent, brand new battery at some charging station?

What's interesting is that they did it differently with the cybertruck. You can buy an additional battery that I believe is swappable.

[maxerickson]

They didn't really try to bring it to market. If the battery was just leased while it was installed in your vehicle (so you were only paying some reservation charge and a use fee instead of the full up front price), you might not feel so attached to it.

[Dylan16807]

Do you have a source for "nobody wanted it"?

From what I can tell they showed it off to get some tax credits, then decided not to deploy it anywhere (but keep the money of course).

[tuatoru]

The battery market is not yet mature enough for this. When the big car manufacturers have all had another decade's experience selling EVs, and battery tech has stabilized, the logic of standardization and swapping will become apparent.

[arein3]

Swapping batteries makes sense for scooters because they are not heavy, and it is done already in asia.

Swapping a battery that weighs a ton and is part of the car structure is another story completely.

I think the more sensible solution is to have fast charging and a reliable network. 800 volt batteries and a good architecture enable incredible fast charging, and in the fjture it might be even faster. Combine that with cars with a lot of range, ex. 400+ miles and a 30m stop once 300 miles doesn't sound bad at all.

[tuatoru]

Battswap is being trialled by trucking companies, with much larger and heavier batteries than in cars. The engineering problems are fiddly and time-consuming to get right but not intrinsically difficult.

With battswap also being done at the lightweight end, eventually there will be convergence in the middle. But I think we have another decade or fifteen years to wait before standardization efforts have a chance and battswap can be vehicle manufacturer agnostic.

Battswap is an obvious way to lower the sticker price of vehicles, which is key to selling the next half billion of them.

[lasfallas]

Battery weight might decrease drastically with next gen tech.

[bushbaba]

We can likely get super charging down to 15 mins with latest tech. Which is an overall better long term approach than battery swapping which requires standard battery sizes limiting innovation