Will EV battery swapping be the future for us?

I scare myself sometimes... :lol:

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WetEV said:

Interesting the number of one post members in this topic.

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Nio plans to have 4,000 battery-swapping stations globally by 2025, according to the brief report, which quoted Nio president Qin Lihong. The company also plans to have 700 swapping stations in operation by the end of the year.

The quickness of battery swapping makes it potentially helpful for early EV adoption, but this underscores that Nio sees it as part of a long-term strategy, even as public charging networks—including its own subsidized charging—continue to expand.

Nio said it completed its 500,000th battery swap in China last year. The automaker recently picked Norway as its first market after China—and it's including battery swapping.

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nlspace said:

That takes an impressive engineering design and development activity to build and field a complicated "robot" to remove and install a pack in 3 minutes. i wonder if the charging of the old packs is automated like that also, and how many can they charge at the same time?

To swap 312 packs a day would require non-stop operation for about 16 hours and fast charging of the empty packs to swap out later in the day.

i noticed that every level 2 station in the parking garage had it's own camera too.

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LouisaRachel said:

This is a service all EV companies should have. Instead of pushing the latest model car on you, they should swap your battery pack, extending the life of your EV and keeping fewer models just sitting around.

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Plugs7 said:

LouisaRachel said:

This is a service all EV companies should have. Instead of pushing the latest model car on you, they should swap your battery pack, extending the life of your EV and keeping fewer models just sitting around.

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Where's the profit in that ?

Planned Obselescence, that's the Auto manufacturers' way

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CATL officially launches its first 4 EVOGO battery swap stations; Nio closing in on 900

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China-based battery giant CATL officially launched its EVOGO battery swap services (earlier post) in Xiamen, southeast China’s Fujian Province, making it the world’s first EVOGO city. The first four fast battery swap stations that have started operation are located in Siming District, Huli District and Haicang District of Xiamen.

The number of fast battery swap stations in Xiamen is expected to increase to 30 by the end of this year, when drivers at any place on Xiamen Island can find one such station within a radius of 3 kilometers.

Designed to look like a bar of chocolate, “Choco-SEB (swapping electric block)” is a mass-produced battery specially developed for EV battery-sharing. It offers high-energy density with small size, flexible combination and minimalist design. With the support of the latest CTP (cell-to-pack) technology, it can achieve a gravimetric energy density of more than 160 Wh/kg and a volumetric energy density of 325 Wh/L, enabling a single block to provide a driving range of 200 km.

At present, the special offer for renting one Choco-SEB block is RMB 399 (US$62) per month, which will be dynamically adjusted according to different level of power consumption by users.

For each battery swap service at the swap station, the charge is almost the same as that of the fast charging service, and it is subject to dynamic adjustment according to different station locations and time slots. . . .

In the future, CATL will add more partners to release more EVOGO vehicle models and deliver EVOGO services in more cities.

Nio closing in on 900 swap stations. Separately, China-based electric automaker Nio announced in its update for Q1 2022 that it has deployed 884 Power Swap stations, 727 Power Charger stations and 3,832 destination chargers in China.

NIO’s second-generation battery swap station allows the vehicle to park automatically in station, where users can experience a three-minute battery swap while staying inside the vehicle. As of 10 December 2021, NIO had provided more than 5.3 million swaps to users in China. Battery swapping has become one of the favorite power solutions among NIO users, the company said.

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China: NIO Celebrates 900th Battery Swap Station
The goal for 2022 is to add a few hundred more.

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. . . The plan is to install over 4,000 stations by the end of 2025, including 1,000 or so outside of China. By the end of 2022, the number of NIO battery swap stations is set to exceed 1,300. The first station in Europe has been officially launched in Norway in January to support the local introduction of the NIO ES8 and the following models.

The currently installed 900 stations were used more than 8 million times (cumulatively), which is a massive number, compared to 700 stations and 5.3 million swaps reported in December 2021. On average, one station was used close to 9,000 times.

There are two standardized battery packs in NIO offer - 75 kWh (which replaced the outgoing 70 kWh) and 100 kWh, while the 150 kWh unit is in the pipeline.

All of the NIO models can use the battery swap stations as an alternative to fast charging on long-distance travel or to upgrade their existing battery to a newer or higher capacity unit. The batteries are offered as a separate rental item (with a monthly fee) to lower the initial purchase price, or as part of the car.

The second-generation Power Swap Station 2.0, introduced in April 2021, has 14 battery slots - 13 battery packs (vs 5 in the 1.0 version) and an empty slot to pick up a discharged battery (or old/previous generation battery when upgrading). According to NIO, they are capable of completing up to 312 battery swaps per day (24 hours), which would mean 4.6 minutes or close to 277 seconds per swap (including parking).

To quickly expand the battery swap network, NIO partners with companies like Sinopec and Shell. NIO and Sinopec already installed 71 battery swap stations in China within 12 months (as well as 75 fast-charging stations and 29 destination charging stations). . . .

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GAC Aion Opens Its First Battery Swap Station In Guangzhou, China
The station features both battery swap and fast-charging capabilities, with a battery replacement taking as little as 2.5 minutes.

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Interestingly, GAC Aion's station features both battery swap and supercharging capabilities, with the company claiming it's equipped with the first system in China to automate EV battery replenishment.

Replacing a vehicle's battery takes as little as 2.5 minutes and supports a replacement life of up to 8,000 cycles, according to the company.

GAC Aion plans to make its home city of Guangzhou the first "city of super-charging" in the world, with plans to build 220 such stations this year and 1,000 by 2025 in the 18-million port city located north of Hong Kong.

By then, the automaker estimates that stations won't be farther away from each other than 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles), with GAC Aion estimating that the network will reduce the time needed for users to find a station to within 5 minutes.

Later on, GAC Aion plans to expand swap stations in China and "other overseas cities," but the automaker did not provide specifics.

For now, GAC Aion has no model compatible with battery swapping, but its entire EV lineup will become battery-swappable from 2023 based on the new GEP 3.0 platform.

Until then, the 220 new stations expected to open in Guangzhou this year will only use their fast-charging capability. The charging point at the swapping station has a theoretical peak charging power of 480 kW, with peak voltages up to 1000V and peak currents up to 600A.

GAC Aion says that 5 minutes of fast-charging produce an additional range of 200 kilometers (124 miles). . . .

China has two safety standards for battery swapping, depending on whether the battery is bolt-on or snap-on. Cars with snap-on batteries must allow at least 5,000 battery changes, while those with bolt-on batteries must allow a minimum of 1,500 changes.

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cwerdna said:

Years ago, at CES, I'd seen https://www.gogoro.com/ for the first time at Panasonic's booth (since the cells inside the packs were Panasonic). We were able to lift the packs and I think put them in a scooter to try (see https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/). The systems had been deployed in Taiwan for awhile.

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