[sokoloff]

It’s enough of a pain in the ass to swap summer and winter tires, and that’s something that (some) people only do twice a year. I can’t imagine people wanting to swap battery packs (either themself or by making an appointment at a service center) before and after every long trip.

[ljf]

Ideally they could just come to my home or workplace and swap the batteries out there while I am doing something else (if it is going to take longer than 30 mins)

[illiac786]

If it’s faster than filing up, why not.

[dboreham]

It won't be.

[illiac786]

Low effort reply, really, try to put in some arguments at least.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[sokoloff]

Both upthread replies seem to evidence approximately the same level of effort to me; "It won't be faster" isn't wildly less effort than "what if it will be faster?"

Nio has fewer Nio battery swap stations operating in the entire world than just the state of New Jersey has filling stations (not dispensers, entire stations).

Nothing in the video above made me think "oh wow, that looks like that process will be a lot faster than filling up!" and several segments made it seem like there would be more time involved in just getting the car into and out of the battery replacement service bay than filling up takes. (Nio's claim of a 2.5-3 minute battery swap seems to be measuring only the swap time while the car is stopped in the bay.)

That's all before we consider the travel time to one of the stations (which is unlikely to be as close to your trip as a typical filling station because of the rarity of stations), time waiting for the car [or cars] in front of you to complete their swap (which if Nios ever became popular would likely be longer than waiting for one of the typically eight or more dispensers to free up at a filling station), nor to account for the "all long range batteries are out of stock at this location, because it's the Friday before Christmas and everyone is road tripping to visit family" NACKs that are liable to occur in a Nio-only battery swap system.

For me the killer line in the video that will make it hard for Nio to solve all of these is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w&t=270s : "Building these stations is incredibly expensive and it's no secret that Nio is losing a staggering amount of money right now..."

[illiac786]

My point is, it may be interesting if it’s faster than filing up. Now, is it likely? Not at the moment, as you correctly pointed out.

Can I guarantee it will never happen? No. Hence my comment. It was not about stating what will happen or not, I don’t feel this type of prediction has any reliability. Millions of people smarter than me get it wrong every day, especially the very long term ones are almost always wrong.