Of course it won't make sense for 10 swaps a day. Will gas station be profitable with 10 fill ups?
I think it is fairly viable idea, if packs will be more or less standartized (we do have 3 types of gas plus diesel, plus all versions with Ethanol and without, and gas stations somehow adjusted), and the cost of battery swapping facility will be actually much less if you think about refineries, trucks and pipelines and other equipment to deliver a gallon of gas to your car...
It should be in the range of thousands of swaps per day to become profitable, and you'll just need few batteries that you would quick charge and cool, so if you have 30 min cycle and you serve 1 car in 5 min, that would be 12 cars per hour, assuming 50/50 load for 20 hours, you can have 120 cars served while having no more than 5 batteries. If you take the model that Israel is building, those stations are fully automatic, so you might just need one attendant running convenience shop that will bring money as well.
Gas stations are running on pennies off a gallon, and manage to survive, even thought environmental approval, storage and constant monitoring of pumps and fire suppression systems is not cheap either. I would say that 5 batteries would be even cheaper than one storage tank for regular gasoline..
BUT you are totally right. It is all about the scale. But if you don't start to make means of refueling, you won't have more cars... I find battery swap actually equally compelling to quick charge network, if not more...
With proper on-site active cooling you may quick charge the battery without side effect of affecting its life...
But I tend to agree that the ownership issue might be an issue in america... Who would want to buy an electric car without a battery, or exchange a brand new battery for an old one on the station... So the only choice should be a lease or rent, pretty much like shared bicycle programs...
That way batteries will be utilized more and physical age factor of the battery will not be a problem even if you don't drive much, and you won't have to give your arm and a leg for an expensive battery upfront, and, guess what, electric cars WILL BE MUCH CHEAPER than ICE... but the cost of filling it up on the road will be much more than cost of pure electricity (you can prorate 200K mi, for $20K battery, which will be $0.1/mi surcharge, pretty much giving us efficiency of a average hybrid car), but guess what, you can still fill it up at home for pennies...
adric22 said:
mark13 said:
http://www.greencarreports.com/pictures/1062413_better-place-shows-off-europes-first-battery-switch-station_gallery-1#100227311
I saw on the bottom of my TV last night,Tesla to expand thier infrastucture at a cost of $700 million..Im guessing and could be wrong but they could be about to expand on a planned battery switching station..
I think battery switching is a pipe dream. I tried to run the numbers once to see how much it would cost to run such a station. Factor in the cost of the battery swapping equipment, the building, the property, and several spare batteries. Then figure out what it would cost to run a battery swap station and make a profit. Try the numbers at 10 swaps per day, 100 swaps, 1,000 swaps, etc. Then ask yourself realistically, how much business such a station would actually get. I'd say even 10 swaps per day is really pushing it. They'd have to charge several hundred Dollars, maybe thousands, per swap in order to stay in business. Even with 100 swaps per day, the cost would still be $200 or $300. Nobody would pay that much. The business model is not sustainable.
Factor in the fact that most EVs don't (and won't) have swappable batteries, that puts the potential customer base even smaller.
Also need to factor in the possibility of people dropping off bad batteries to be swapped out for working batteries. How will that be dealt with?
Also consider that not all cars will use the same battery type. That means the battery swap companies would need to store extra batteries of each type.
The whole concept is just so terrible flawed. The only problem it solves is range, but it creates so many more problems it isn't worth it.
