Battery swapping is a technology that could solve one key barrier for EV adoption: consumers’ range anxiety and the long waiting time for battery charging. Wouldn’t you feel more assured on a weekend trip if you knew you could stop at a swap station and replace depleted battery packs with fully charged ones in five minutes? But this isn’t easy to do, as Tesla and Better Place’s past failures. In China, however, battery swapping has been a reality for a couple of years. How did Chinese companies like Nio make it work with 2,300 swapping stations nationwide? What can companies outside China learn from the Chinese experience?
Nah, we already use it:
https://www.nio.com/news/NIO-reaches-30-Power-Swap-Stations-in-Europe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w
We just need to get our heads out of the sand and take these challenges from China seriously in the EU and the US with proper coordinated reindustrialization policies. Tariffs and bans only buy us time.
I know it’s not “apples to apples” but swapping giant forktruck batteries (I assume they were lead-acid) has been done for decades too. I think we did it at Sam’s Club, at least for when the batteries wouldn’t charge.