An important point to mention is that NIO cars can ALSO fast charge, with CCS. A lot of people I talk to keep discounting NIO because of questions like what if a swap station fail and they will be stranded. I have to keep reminding that swapping is simply an additional option.
I'm a NIO owner in Beijing. NIO swap stations is what makes an electric car pretty much similar to a conventional car. I swap 2-3 times a week (average monthly milage 3000km) spending 5-6 min per a swap. I've stopped using my home charger
It sounds to me that battery swap would work great in many European cities like London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. One argument against EV I often hear is that many people can't charge at home. Battery swap will let you use the EV just like a fossil car.
@@bjornnyland Yes, for me it's 95% charging at home, 4% charging in my friends' places and 1% public charging. So that's why it feels strange. But I believe it's great option for many.
@@bjornnyland they just need to put chargers where people park. even in cities you still need to park the car, even if its not in front of your home. there is no reason the munincipality can put a charger there, or the garage owner.
Since I am from Israel I can tell you the main problem with Better Place. Since Israel is a very small country it was a perfect location for better place but the infrastructure was not mature enough and cost was too high. 1. The selected car was bad. Renault Fluance was big, heavy and the range was very small (~100km) 2. The number of swapping stations were small 3. Public charging was 11Kw which was very slow. 4. Home charging was very very slow (less than 3Kw) 5. Subscription cost was very high Not sure where you came up with the wrong assumption that you can't home charge EV cars in Israel... I drive a Tesla in Israel and you can definiately charge any car using any outlet you want . I personally use Tesla charging station (11Kw) but at the office I use a standard 220V outlet (3Kw). By the way, you are slowly becoming a very familiar figure in Israel. When I am asked questions about electric vehicles I send them to your channel which in my opinion is the only one that gives accurate truth data about the vehicles. WLTP / EPA / NEDC is all nonsense. There is nothing like your information !!
Exactly. And I was talking about why Better Place failed back then. Not being able to charge from household socket was one of the reasons that lead to failure.
@@bjornnyland Another Israeli here. Israel was not against EVs back then. There were like 1000 Fluence ZE on the roads. They sold like hot cakes. There's still one in my building with it's own charging port. The real problem was only the cost and lack of support from more manufacturers, because the REAL original limitation was lack of models... despite loving the idea of EV's back then, people waited for other cars and manufacturers to go for it too. But only Renault was in on it, and most people didn't like the model. Tesla has been selling in Israel for only under a year and already they delivered ~4000 cars last I heard. It might be closer to 6000~ by now. That's only Tesla. MG has been selling the ZS EV for a couple of years now but brand recognition wasn't too good so they only sold like a 1000 units. Skywell, Aiways, Geely, Skoda, Hyundai, Mercedes, only started selling several months ago. Audi started only now. Oil conglomerates were a pain in the ass, slowing EV adoption which is why we're always late to the party. The real problem is infrastructure. We have a bad history with that BECAUSE of Better Place so normal people are a little skeptic. But the people who know a thing or two about EV's know where it's really at. This time it's totally different. There are fast chargers everywhere, parking lots are being upgraded, new ones are being built with EV charging in mind. Israel is in the forefront of wireless charging and autonomous driving. Moovit is working hard on robo-taxis. Mobil-eye was the first to integrate a camera to cars and they were basically the first driver assist system on the market, from which manufacturers (Tesla included) took notes from. I'm sorry if I sound a bit harsh, but the misinformation about this country has been too strong lately. On all fronts (if you know what I mean.......). I love your channel Bjorn, been watching for a year now. You're very informative.
Couple of nuggets to fill some of your knowledge gap of Nio's battery swap. 1. Most Nio battery swap stations are Gen 2 not Gen 1, that is more Gen 2s have been built than Gen 1s. 2. With every swap, Nio battery cloud management system checks the battery for functionality and safety issues. Should there be a problem and the battery efficiency is below a certain threshold, it is removed from the system and send to be repaired or taken out of circulation altogether. 3. Swapping technology allows for effective and efficient recycling should any issues arise within a cell and replaced 4. With advancement in battery tech, swapping allows easy and effective transition by the replacement of old technology with new technology at no or minimum cost. Currently, Nio is switching from a 70 KWh standard-range battery to 75 KWh hybrid of ternary lithium and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells standard-range battery. 5. One can easily upgrade or downgrade battery size depending on needs. Example, suppose in your daily commute, a 70KWh battery is sufficient, but you need a larger battery for a family trip to go an see the Aurora Borealis up north. You can easily upgrade your battery to a larger size, hence minimizing your charging times on your trip. 6. Solar panels can be installed on swap stations to generate power to charge batteries as well as the swap stations can serve as emergency battery backup for the electric grid during emergencies power outage. Very environmentally-friendly, isn't this one of the main reasons people buy EVs. To help solve earth climate change issues. 7. Works well with BaaS. Value of the EV is maintained due to the upgradability of new battery tech for the vehicle. You don't need to buy a new car to get the latest battery technology.
Bjorn I'd love to hear your opinion when you get to try Nio's battery swapping service. I noticed that when you test out ES-8 you spent a lot of time charging. Nio owners in China already find Nio's battery swapping service very essential. Looking forward to your video.
Survival of the fittest I‘d say - every product needs its clients. And if there’s no need for a feature (like swapping) in a specific country or region you can be sure that it won’t be spread there. We cannot decline that battery swapping is a success model in China - the biggest market for EV’s. And future will show how convenient it is for people to change(fuel), exchange(extend range with bigger battery) or upgrade (newer battery technology) on a swapping station. Bright future ahead 😀
I don’t see any downsides in having the additional option of battery swap. It gives youthe option of having a fully charged battery within minutes. One can argue cars stuck with unswappable batteries are bad for the environment. Batteries degrade, fast charging (that still won’t come close to swapping in terms of speed) accelerates battery degradation, new battery technology makes old batteries obsolete etc. These factors will quickly devalue a otherwise good car. That’s wasteful (but good for car companies that want to make money)
One of the biggest improvements in EV's during the last few years is that the CCS plug type has become the only accepted standard in EU (type 1, ChaDeMo is still out there, but nothing new hits the roads at least). Tesla opening up their network means that we have a fully standardized system where every car can charge at every charging station. (almost) No exceptions. With Battery Swaps we are back to square one. Every brand has its own infrastructure. That sucks. So I'm not a fan. Charging at home/dest chargers 95% of the time and 10-15 minute visits at HPC's once or twice per month works much better. If Nio wants to invest around here, I would prefer them to invest in public CCS chargers.
@@corywhyte2899 "you know thats what people said about charging infrastructure right?" Instead of asking silly questions you should focus on the fundamentals in this market. People like Tony Seba predicted (a decado ago) that the electric cars would take over based on fundamentals. Electric cars are simple better and cheaper cars, and those kinds of products will eventually take over. And on that topic. Regular DC fast chargers are the better product. They are cheaper, less complex, more scalable, and the list goes on. We are also seeing a trend where the charging time declines over time, and we will probably see the 10%-80% charging time getting near 10 minutes in the near future. When that happens any investment into a battery swapping station is incredible stupid in most locations. So no. Battery swapping will never become mainstream.
@@yourcrazybear 10% - 80% in 10 mins ? achieved when? how about degradation? time is relevant in this world. if you can achieve this in 20 years , swap stations can be useful for 20 years. and you pay extra for better service. swap battery is merely an extra option. you can always fast charge NIO
You can't swap 12 car per hour. I say that realistic maximum 8 min. It takes 6 minutes pure swap process plus entering and driving out. So around 8 min in total. Look at videos in real life (second generation stations). And that if everything goes well. NIO also claimed that they charge battery in 40-50 kW. So if you make calculations you will understand why they put 13 batteries. 13 batteries will ensure non stop swap. One battery will be charged (depending on size) in around 1.8 hour (considering 50-40 kW charging speed and some left over capacity). So if agree with charging speed, that means 7,5 cars per 1 hour. Take 7,5 (batteries delivered per hour)*1,8 (charging speed)=13,5 (batteries needed to keep the flow of 7,5/8 cars per hour). So that all adds up. If you take 12 cars, that will no way will manage to ensure non stop flow with 13 batteries.
@@rogerstarkey5390 They will probably have some average percentage of being used batteries sizes in the region and will load swapping bay accordingly. However, that will not ensure battery upgrade for vacation period or holidays because everyone will go for bigger one and that will destroy all the planning. Anyway for daily use that will work. Other problem is degradation. They say "you don't have to worry" YES YOU DO. NIO didn't indicate what is considered to be good condition. Is it down to 95% of original capacity 90%, 85% or maybe even 80%? So you buy a new car and instead of 100% you get lets say 90% of original capacity battery after swap. Worst thing that you will never get your new one back... ever. Its gone :). I don't think that they will through out 90% of original capacity batteries away. And one more important fact. If you arrive to swapping station and you have at least one car in front, that's already 16-18 min not 8. This is almost the time of reaching from 10% to 70% with existing Tesla model 3.
Yes. For the same amount of money invested you can build a higher total throughput charging location with regular DC fast chargers. And if you are in line 3-4 in the queue for the battery swapping station you are not saving any time anymore, and if you wait for your time you just sit idle without charging anything at all. And if one battery swapping station breaks, you lose 100% of your capacity for that charging location, instead of just a fraction if a single charger breaks down.
Great evaluation again, Bjørn, thanx. Hopefully more and more drivers would listen to such arguments, and will understand operating an EV much better. I also like the approach of "at least we've taken out one more fossil car from traffic." 👍 Some has already indicated two additional swap-station benefits you did not mention: 1. Once you go on a longer journey, you can apply for a bigger pack. 2. As battery packs develop and get larger in capacity, later on your car can be "upgraded" again-and-again. While a fossil car just simply stays as it is, and even emitting more and more as it gets older. RE: chaos of lots of supercharger stations: I think gas-station brands sooner or later will experience demand-drop for petrol and diesel fuels, so gradually these station(network)s - that already exist - could be transformed to supercharger stations, ...with already perfect and occupied locations. Great job, Bjørn, please do carry on!
From what i read about the Nio swap service is that the swap stations are mainly in big population centers. Which does make sense. The cars still have fast charging capability (sort of), which means away from those stations you are not stranded. In effect, along heavily used routes and in or close to big cities it does make a lot of sense to have swap stations. The price difference between swap stations and chargers is of course, at least until there is standardization, a red herring. As every car company would have to build their own swap stations, and of course that would mean 10 or 15 swap stations at highway charging park. So in effect changing over to battery swapping would require standard batteries usable in many different cars.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Population centers simply because there are many many customers, and most do not have their own charging available. Easy to see in china where most people live in huge condo complexes and not in their own house. Same essentially in most of europe. Easy to just drive into a changing station on your way to or from work and get a freshly charged battery in 3 minutes (which is what Nio manages). By the way, Tesla is actually going the same way with larger supercharger sites in the middle of the city, enable on-the-way charging for people living there, they installed a V3 supercharger (12 stalls, able to extend) in the middle of my city for exactly that reason, by the way right next to many other fast and ultra fast chargers. I do agree that standardization is not going to happen anytime soon. Therefore there is quite a valid argument not to use swap stations for most cars, as the multitude of different swap systems would clutter up the world much more than a few large charging hubs. But of course, that requires longer stops and not everybody loves that.
@@rogerstarkey5390 On long journeys you might be right, although i have to say i usually do need a lot less time than the car does. For those within population centers on their way to and from work it is simply a nuisance, nothing more, nothing less. Which is one of the big appeals of Nio's battery swap stations in China. It can service 20 to 30 cars during the time one needs to fast charge, which means a much higher possible throughput, and a lot less time for the driver to wait. I know many don't like to hear it, but there is a time penalty to pay for driving electric at the moment. I have a regular commute where i rent a Model 3, and on that i need around one to 1,5 hours more than i need in a gas car. That is around 120 to 180 Euro lost income. Or, to put it another way, getting up at 2:30 in the morning instead of 4:00, and that makes a huge difference. If i could cut down those charging stops with swaps to 10 to 15 minutes, it would make it much more reasonable.
You can charge NIO just like Tesla or any other EV or you can swap your battery. But only in NIO you can swap your battery for the right size and weight that you need in any situation. Small and light battery for economy in city and large pack for roadtrip. And batteries in charging station can be used to store solar or wind energy and balance the power grid, they dont have to lay around and do nothing, they can make money while everyone is asleep storing and trading renewable energy.
Thanks for the impartial feedback! At the moment I believe battery swapping and more specifically, the BAAS structure has a lot more positives than negatives. I don't think I heard you mention the fact that leasing out the battery via the BAAS model significantly decreases the initial purchase price of the car. When NIO announces their small size sedan during NIO Day I believe they can get the price of the car down to the low $30k USD with BAAS which is very close to the Tesla Model 3 price in China as well as equivalent luxury ICE vehicles in the same category. I see this as a race to convert ICE to EV and BAAS is a big step forward to making that happen.
No. It's the other way around. Battery swapping have more negatives than positives. And lowering the initital cost on your car is quite irrelevant if it means you pay a premium for the battery swapping. It's the total cost of ownership that matters in the end.
For me a most significant aspect of my Kia Soul is that I charge in my driveway. I save so much time that way that the rare times I have to go somewhere to charge is not a big deal. In China where there is a high population density and high EV density battery swapping could work. I like to point out that the only thing common in cars these days is the tire valve. Trying to get a standard between manufacturers is near impossible. So each manufacturer has to have their own battery swap stations at a range to allow travel. Nio on one corner, Tesla on the next, Toyota (if they ever get their head out), Volvo etc etc etc. I think the biggest barrier to swapping is not bolts but connections. In the life of an EV it will be rare to remove a battery pack at all let alone a couple of times a month or week. Electrical connections fail. Always, Jack Rickard said "I never met a connector I liked" some last longer but frequent use of electrical connectors will lead to failure.
I think most people will primarily charge their car with an 11 kW homecharger. Then the biggest advantage of the NIO battery swap program is, that you can now buy a NIO ES 8 with a 100 kWh battery and 400 km. real world range, and in 2023 swap your 100 kWh battery with a 150 kWh battery, and then you have a NIO ES 8 with 600 km. real world range. Maybe in 2028 you can swap your 150 kWh battery with a 200 kWh battery, and then you have a NIO ES 8 with 800 km. of real world range.
Hi Björn, cost-wise you are not right. The battery swap stations also have to charge the batteries. If you want to have a throughput of 12 batteries per hour, you have to charge 12 batteries per hour. That means you have to install the whole charger tech as well for swapping stations.
Unfortunately I am right. If you paid attention to the video, I mentioned that a gen 2 swap station needs 1250 kVA. That's roughly 1.2 MW. It chan charge all batteries at the same time.
@@bjornnyland In order to match the total throughput of 12 regular fast chargers you will need to charge your 12 batteries in the station just as fast you would with regular chargers. The problem here is that even if you build out your charging infrastructure in the station to handle this, you are left with a lot of extra investments to handle all the machinery for the actual swapping of batteries, maintainence, etc. All of this money could have been spent on building more regular chargers instead and thus increasing the total throughput further. All the batteries inside the station could also have been put in cars that sells with high margins, which would result in even more money that can be spent on further increasing the total throughput.
Yeah, as one or two others have said. This only works if you are in a major city. Broadband technology has been around for 15-20 years, but living 40 minutes outside a city I still only get the base 10Mbps service. In London people have super fast broadband, they are rolling out 5G, there are high speed EV charging stations etc. It will always be city centric. There is nothing more convenient than fully charging my car overnight so it is ready to go every morning. I can see battery swap as a great way to upgrade, or during an annual service.
Nio has their own super chargers too. Nio’s swap station is by default gonna be the standard in China and power storage to power the grid in the future.
CATL, NIO, and 6 major banks in China formed a separate company for battery as a service. I can see a possible future where the battery lease and the battery swap network can be accessible from other manufacturers
@@yourcrazybear well you clearly dont get the big picture :D First of all, by the time you can fully charge a battery within 10 minutes, a swap will replace your battery in a few seconds. But with that aside, its not just about charging the battery. It's also about battery management, diagnosis, recyclability, battery storage and of course upgradability, flexibility and 0 degradation guarantee for the customers. All this together brings the cost of batteries down too, so its also more economical when it scales further. You are missing out on so much when your car is stuck with a built in battery... btw, having to get out of the car to drag a stupid cable and then having to wait till your car is charged on top of that is just an annoyance. We need a solution that beats the gas station experience. With swaps you just give the command and your car takes care of the rest autonomously. Wireless charging on the other hand can compensate to swaps very well. for example in private parking spaces where people want a cleaner setup without cables etc. but of course that's more of a preference thing, not a replacement of the wired charging.
I've seen a lot of comments saying that, the swapping station is proprietary and every brand has its own infrastructure would be chaos. This is true, but I've never heard anyone complain that many of the existing supercharger stations are also proprietary, such as Tesla's (but I've learned that Tesla is planning to open their supercharge stations to other brands). In fact, you can see a swapping station as another type of supercharger station that takes up less space and gets you fully charged faster, while also giving you the option to upgrade to the latest battery technology and never have to worry about battery degration. For an EV with non-replaceable battery, you'll see the value after three to four years of battery wear. Ideally, a full charge in minutes (that gives you long range) or even wireless charging would be best. But if you know enough about battery technology development, you will find that this is never possible.
Bjorn is correct to focus Battery swap from perspective of population density and housing type where car garages are not common in many other countries. There is also benefits of upgradeability and degradation. Another important factor to add on that is not mentioned, 5 minute charge/swap to go from 0% to 100% is extremely important for other use-cases such as Taxi service, ROBOTAXIS, Road Tripping, Business Trips can benefit greatly from battery swaps.
Betterplace was operating in Denmark as well. There was a battery swapping station right next to where Køge Supercharger is located today. When Renault ZOE was introduced, it did not support battery swapping, so confidence in betterplace dropped and they closed. Renault offered Fluence owners to buy back their cars, but some people kept them and I still see some of them driving here in Denmark
Numbers I saw before was a supercharger station with ~12 chargers was around $250k. They are much cheaper to operate as well. A swap is quicker but they eventually will run out of fresh batteries if a high use location and it will queue up as well. The cost of spare batteries have to be included in the cost as well.
One BIG detail you missed is that NIO offers free battery upgrades when new battery technology is deployed. Nobody else does this and it’s a main selling point. You need to try it! Nio owners love their nios for many reason, but swaps are a main one. They can charge like a normal car at home and you can swap when you are in a rush somewhere. Their ecosystem is killer, been studying it for a long time.
Agreed. In China today, existing NIO owners can upgrade their battery from 70kwh to 75kwh technology for FREE. The newer 75kwh battery technology has more range, better hot/cold weather efficiency and capability to supercharge.
I actually haven't missed it. It's been shot in a video that hasn't been published yet. Another big detail you didn't mention was the possibility to downgrade.
@@bjornnyland Correct. If you study what they do in China is actually very interesting. They will allow you to upgrade many hardware parts, not just batteries. I started investing in them in 2019 and I’m honestly blown away by their vision. They don’t aim to become the next Tesla, but rather the Apple of EVs. They have a very catchy ecosystem, that is the actual product. The car is the entry. Users start going to events together, buy lots of nio products from the app and basically integrate nio into most aspects of their life. I am watching what’s happening in Norway very carefully and I am sure many people are also interested. Please make more videos on Nio in Norway. Keep up the great work!
Below are the advantages of battery swapping: 1. Don’t need to worry about current battery condition, NIO take care of it. 2.battery can be upgraded when technology upgraded. If you own EV that are not battery swapping you will need to sell your current car and upgrade to a new one. 3. No big lineup and waiting to get your car charged. 4. Maintain your car value when you sell as you don’t need to discount your car price due to battery concern. 5.due to physics more fast charging simply just killing your battery. Also, in cold weather charging is very challenging. I live in Canada we have extreme weather which the temperature drop below -30 degrees. Tesla has problems to charge. Battery swap stations temperature is being control in optimal condition so you don’t need to worry about charging in cold weather. There are many more advantages and too much to talk about, the last hit. Robotaxi which NIO is a partner with, just think the car can drive to swap stations and automatically swap out the batteries. Hopefully this resolved people doubt on battery swap stations. Thank you for your video on explaining NIO to others.
Fluence ZE only had a 3.7kW internal charger. I owned one with leased battery and the user experience with Renault was terrible. They charged me every month even when the battery was out for repair, there was a limit on kms per year or else you would pay more, they didn't fulfill the promise that they would swap the battery at 75% health, and selling my car was a complete nightmare.
Many people in Europe are against the complexity of swaps, but I can provide my own experience from owning a ES6 in China during 2019. I didn't have the possibility to charge at home because I was living in a condominium (as most people do). After you get used to swapping, going back to sitting 30 minutes at chargers is not nice. Also, a big advantage was when taking longer trips I was able to swap my 70Kwh battery for a 100Kwh for a week or so. And I never planned the road trips according to charger stations, I planned on what restaurant I wanted to eat at instead of getting fast food from gas stations.
@@boostav What he wanted to express but left out was that he was living in a condominium so his parking lot was also rented and couldn't install a charging station. This is very common in big cities in China.
@@rogerstarkey5390 No, you pay for what you get. If you rent a small battery, you also pay less. If there are not enough big batteries in times of high demand, you can't upgrade temporarily and it can be an issue though.
@@boostav sorry, I didn't make it clear that the parking there didn't allow for installing a charging wall box. I feel that ~90% of people in big cities in China (and in many parts of Europe) can not charge at home, so swapping makes perfect sense because it replaces the habit of going to gas stations with going to swap stations. You just don't need to change your habits like sitting 30-40 minutes to charge, you don't need to understand coldgating, rapidgating, etc...
@@rogerstarkey5390 you don't seem to be familiar with swapping at all, but I didn't take anyone's battery because I temporary rented the higher one. There are plenty to swap, even 100Kwh, and you can see on the screen before hand how many 100Kwh packs there are in a certain station. You can even reserve it, and you'll be getting that battery when you arrive.
So we have several advantages - batteries may last longer as they will not have to be charged as fast. Maybe we can make batteries that charge really fast and do not degrade much. - once a battery goes bust then it already belongs to the ones renting it so they can fix them or recycle them more effectively. Now they have to get the batteries from their owners. - one can benefit from upgrades as batteries get larger - swapping is faster than charging so less waiting - swap stations use less space than chargers and are cheaper Challenges - setting a standard for batteries across car manufacturers may be close to impossible but this would provide the best experience for the user as the user may go to any swap station and not to some. - if some companies do this individually then you are limited to regions where these swappers operate. Going to another country may be a lot different. - batteries are not like gas containers as they age and give less range. - one way to need less chargers is to make it easier to charge at home or almost everywhere. This may go hand in hand with local production of electricity. It is very possible that we may not own so much cars, but rent them. Once they can get autonomous then transportation may be just a service. There are already a bunch of rent a ride like spark, teleport, Hertz and so on.
One of the "unsolved" issues is the yearly holiday trip where you have a peak traffic moment on the motorways in France and Germany to the south. Today you even have queues at gas pumps. With superchargers or swap stations, you come to the same issue of capacity in July/August, but a strong under usage in the rest of the year. Problem stays the same with swap or HPC's. Not easy to solve... But if you look at an average user in Europe today, they do 90% of charging at home, and quite occasionally use HPC as the daily commute is well under the normal battery range. Getting the battery full over night is then more then sufficient. In cities with only public parking, the situation is different.
The homecharging situation will change when more and more ppl who do'nt own a garage or house buy ev's. Therefor swaps could be a solution and the swapstations can help the grid if necessary, preventing blackouts.
That is the plan. Supply power to the grid when power is expensive and recharge when it is cheap. Also they're putting solar panels on the Gen 2 power swap stations creating a substantial solar power grid.
I would go a step further and say its a NEED. In order Coal and Gas will be reduced, we need a lot of storagecapacity for solar/wind. So Swapstations beside others can help to do this.
@@christianhadden6720 Battery swapping speed is only impressive when it's barely used. For the same amount of money you could have built more regular chargers instead and getting a higher total throughput at your charging stations. And by putting the batteries in your high margins cars you could have earned quite a lot of money that you could spend on further increasing the total throughput. In other words, battery swapping stations is a waste of money, completely destroys your total throughput when it breaks, and is far from future proof.
Battery Swap, as practice by Nio, is the future and best model. Here why: 1- The battery is rented, thus reducing the cost of buying the car 2- User gets upgraded on new battery technology. 3- it is faster than charging with a charger.
Did you forget robotaxis in the future? Robotaxi is a 2.5 trillion dollar market and it is going to be the 'next big thing'. It may not be viable to keep robotaxi charging for 1 hour + and lose revenue during the downtime. Also robotaxi can put in 400-800 miles per day! Battery degradation will be high if you supercharge batteries every day.
No. It will never become mainstream. There are more drawbacks than benefits here. 1. No. While it may reduce the initial cost of the car, it will raise the total cost of ownership over long periods of time. 2. People get a battery that is stuck to one particular format and thus limits future innovations. 3. Only when the swapping station is barely used. For the same amount of invested money you can get a better total throughput by buildiing regular DC fast chargers.
@@yourcrazybear You're right, it will never become mainstream and highly adopted. Battery Swap is an additional optional way to recharge an EV. But you are dead wrong on #1, 2 and 3. #1: How will it raise the TCO? It costs 15k to replace a battery after few years. Model S sold in 2015, and that has accumulated over 100k miles have so much problems with their batteries. Meanwhile my 2007 Prius runs like a champ. #2: You're partially right. The form (shape of the battery housing) is fixed but that doesnt mean the internals and chemical makeup of the battery is same. #3: Throughput is dead wrong, yet again. A NiO battery swap station, for example, takes 4 parking spots. In a single day, it can swap 250+ cars., assuming it takes 5 minutes each swap. A supercharger can only recharge 96 cars in a single day (4 parking spots X 24 hours), assuming it takes 1 hour to recharge 0-100%. Are you implying 250 is smaller than 96?
@@yourcrazybear Battery swap will be mainstream very soon in China. When you say a different battery format, do you mean triangle or circular? And why you want them in those formats? Just kidding. I think that that current battery format and dimensions should work well for most cars. Unless you are talking about one where the battery is place in the rear like in the Lotus Elija. But I don’t think that is absolutely necessary when the car is all wheel drive. The model S plaid proved that.
In drove a Fluence for a year back in 2014. Fluence Z.E. was a modified ICE Car, the Trunk was tiny, because the batterybox was located between the backseats and the trunk. AC Charging was only possible up to 3,7kW no DC. Type 1 Plug. Battery was 21kWh but more like 16kWh many batteries got under 80% SoH. And Renault struggled to change them out. Range was 110 for me in winter more like 70 - 80km But it was fun to drive. :D And i liked to look of it somehow. Batteryswap was not available in Germany. 2015 i bought a ZOE Q210 43kW AC Charger FTW! 2019 i got my Model 3 LR AWD totally differed world For me battery swap is not needed.
Platforms evolve as well as batteries, both in size, shape and tech. People at NIO really thinks that these form factors will function in new cars in ten years? If not, swap stations won’t necessarily have that battery your car needs at that specific moment, or the worse, your battery type is discontinued
@@rogerstarkey5390 I don't understand what you are talking about xD NIO's battery pack is always the same size, regardless of capacity and specification. When it comes to the chassis of the battery, it's space is enough for any further advancement in battery technology. after all, NIO is running a company together with CATL (biggest battery maker in the world), with the purpose of managing and supplying batteries for this tech. The trends in battery tech are in weight reduction, efficiency and performance. So NIO's chassis will only benefit as the reduction in weight will bring better ranges to the cars and the pack it's self has patented top notch cooling and fire prevention security so they should be able to push the tech even further. Their packs are made with future proofing in perspective. There are literally no drawbacks of battery swapping. Only advancements to be made.
The battery swap has two points you didn't notice. The initial buying price is much lower because you rent the battery (10k?). The second is that there are high power chargers in the battery swap stations. So, if technology goes in much faster charging times and much higher ranges probably the cost of ownership will increase too. Then, the rent possibility comes to help the sells. The rent is a hidden bought of energy and in fast way. Chipper? We will see. Very good one Bjorn.
Have you done any napkin math on the breakpoint between when its best to lease the battery or buy it outright? For Norway there is factors like VAT if you buy the battery at a later stage and such.
@@onetwothreefour-s1n That sounds pretty good! What do you think about risk on resale with a leased battery? Lets say you want to sell the car in 3 years and BaaS never really took off (or the potential buyer does not want to lease), then you potentially take a value hit or have to buy a battery with 25% VAT on top or am I overcomplicating things?
Battery swaps would make sense if all manufacturers use a standard pack format. I personally believe that swapping will remain an urban niche while battery and charging tech improves so much that 15%-80% DCFC sessions last less than 10 minutes at a time on average.
Not necesaryly government. If Nio with theyre partners (banks, investors and insurances) offer the tecnology with good conditions to other manufacturers, i bet theres gonna be a lot who will opt in.
That would just limit innovation. Battery swapping will never become mainstream. It's just a waste of resources to build out a battery swapping network today.
@@yourcrazybear I'm not saying that they should force anyone to go for better swap but having standardized physical design of battery like shape and screws will come handy in Future. This is what they've done and will be done all over the world to standardize chargers too
@@Bud_Terence Geely is also trying to enter into swapping market and they're much bigger player then NIO in car market (they own Volvo, Polestar, Geometry and other subbrands too) You're correct an alliance of 3-4 major car manufacturers can do this very easily.
First, for battery swaps forget about bolts to hold the battery in place. A better system is required. Second, if it is to work that a standard "interface" will have to be specified - mechanical and electrical. This means that a standards organization such as SAE or even IEEE will have to be involved.
Looks like all 400 NIO battery swap stations can only swap batteries for one car at a time. It takes at least 6 minutes per car. Maximum of 10 cars per hour. That means if you have 5 cars in front of you, you need to wait for 30 minutes in line and then 6 minutes for the swap. If only few people use it, it may save them time. I can't see this as a replacement for HPC and AC charger infrastructure, only as an addition.
Wireless would be the best option. Megawatt capacity stall(s)? Grid will surely be in lots of pain. Especially supermarket parking lots, having half a dozen reserved parking spots for 'wireless' shoppers, one or a few at the disabled/family parking spots. Parking near flat apartment buildings, where charging at home is highly unlikely could also use a few dozen such spots. No cables no mess.
It's easier to just park your car and plug in a cable, rather than trying to park your car in the exact position to get the full charging speed. It's also easier to service charging stations if they are not buried in the ground.
No. That is horrible news for customers. The gains in packaging and weight reduction are so small (around 10% compared to non-structural, so basically -50 Kg on a Model3) that are not worth it for the customer. You get stuck with a battery that is not serviceable or repairable anymore due to the enclosure. If the battery or chassis / undercarriage has an issue and needs repairing, the car will get totaled, even if it's only a few years old. It's like in a fossil car the transmission is part of the chassis and if the clutch fails you need to total the car. Plus, you are stuck with the current technology vs. swapping that can in theory replace the current battery tech with something like Solid state (if that will ever get mass produced) without the need to replace the entire car.
@@gechichan No. It's good news. The 4680 battery and structural battery pack will add quite a bit of extra range to your car. And if you get in an accident where you actually damage the structural battery pack, your car would have been totaled anyway. Also. Battery swapping puts a limit on future innovation, structural battery pack does not. With structural battery pack you will get a cheaper car, a lighter car, more range, more safety, and the list goes on.
@@yourcrazybear the extra range touted by Musk at battery Day when it came to structural battery was 13%. And that should be taken with a grain of salt because in presentations you use the best case scenario, but in real life it will most likely be way less probably around 7 to 8%. Not worth it in my eyes, but each their own. For example, this is what Apple is doing with the SSDs and RAM for their MacBooks - they solder these components onto the motherboard, so they are not replaceable in case of failure. The only advantage is that the laptop is thinner and very slightly lighter, but for the consumer it's a nightmare and the price is the same as before (but Apple makes more). I've had a $2500 MBP go to thrash after 3 years because of this - I much prefer the Windows laptops where you can upgrade the RAM / SSD / etc
@@gechichan "the extra range touted by Musk at battery Day when it came to structural battery was 13%. And that should be taken with a grain of salt because in presentations you use the best case scenario, but in real life it will most likely be way less probably around 7 to 8%. Not worth it in my eyes, but each their own." I would guess that they use the EPA testing scenarios to come up with the 13% range increase. Of course the range increase will not be as much if you only drive on the highway. But it's not only more range you get as a customer, you also get a lighter car, better safety, a cheaper car, and the list goes on. "For example, this is what Apple is doing with the SSDs and RAM for their MacBooks - they solder these components onto the motherboard, so they are not replaceable in case of failure. The only advantage is that the laptop is thinner and very slightly lighter, but for the consumer it's a nightmare and the price is the same as before (but Apple makes more). I've had a $2500 MBP go to thrash after 3 years because of this - I much prefer the Windows laptops where you can upgrade the RAM / SSD / etc" That's a bad comparison comparing hardware like RAM against hardware like EV batteries. While it's easy and relatively cheap to switch components like RAM yourself, the same will never be true for EV batteries.
GAC and Xpeng already revealed 480 kW DC chargers, so this technology can be available quite fast. GAC is already selling the GAC Aion V SUV in China with a 150 kWh battery, which can charge from 10 - 80 percent battery state with a speed of 480 kW all the way to 80 percent battery state.
@@rogerstarkey5390 It’s all hyped, you should check out the charging of the Porsch Taycan 900v architecture. IMO, currently battery technology is not ready for 900v architecture. Not until solid state battery becomes available.
Actually, the Nio app can tell you the number of people in the queue as you get closer to the station. Also, it tells you the % charged and # of KWH of available batteries. Should you find the queue too long for to liking, you can easily go to the next station.
If we want to consider battery swap as a future solution, the batteries should be standardized, so as to have a sufficiently dense network of stations to avoid having to make long detours to recharge. This is what is being done with fast DC chargers, which will soon allow all vehicles to be recharged, whatever their make, as long as they have a type 2 socket. With battery swap, each manufacturer should achieve an equivalent density so that users do not have to make too many detours to recharge. Can you imagine stations of each brand (VW, Mercedes, bmw, tesla, Nio, MG, peugeot, renault, etc.) grouped every 200 km? If users have to make an extra 15 or 20 minute detour, this will make battery swap pointless, because this time will be enough to recharge on a fast charger, and will be an opportunity to take a break. I doubt the relevance of battery swap on a large network. It may be worthwhile in very dense areas. Another point to address is the lack of competition if the batteries and swap stations are attached to the brands. The customer becomes a prisoner and has to pay the price fixed by the manufacturer, without the possibility to choose another network, except maybe to go to a fast charge station...
IMHO battery swapping is not gonna survive longterm. Once wireless charging is fast and cheap enough, it will replace the swapping. Don‘t get me wrong - big fan of swapping this is the next step - but EV‘s have so much more potential to unleash and battery swapping is just one step in the charging evolution. So looking forward to the bright future 😀
@@yourcrazybear I like a 360 degree view on things. And that only works by listening to other opinions and thoughts. What in particular do you think is gonna make swapping fail in the long term? Of course others invited too to share their thoughts.
Thank you for the info. My assumption about 8 average per swap station was wrong then. The correct number is 10. But that doesn't change much of the estimations I did.
It's just one video. About 1 of 200 video. And no editing done. What I talked about was to shoot *everyting* in 4k and edit everything in 4k and store everything in 4k. Big difference.
@@bjornnyland It’s just one feedback. I understand the hassle, work and all that, but from a viewers point I think it would lift the channel/content even more, even RUclips compresses the 4K content a lot. Just my opinion and feedback - not criticism 😄 good luck
But bateryswop station can be used as a batery storage to balance the grid. Buying cheep electricety and then selling it thrugh batery swap. Please get info from BYD. I think that e trucks and e busses with V2G will allso when parked by charge infracture act as batery storage.
As far as I know NIO battery swap system has become a national standard of China, that means other car companies can also join the battery swap network if they want to. Of course there will be some restricts like battery voltage etc, I don't know too much about tech details but it should not be too hard to make the swap station compatible with different size of cars/batteries.
if I remember correctly, the Renault drivers found it uneconomical. The cost of leasing the battery was too high if they did not do many miles/kilometers.
@@yourcrazybear when you dig a little it's not. Let me tell you why. When choosing BaaS you will have a deduction from the current price. An Norvegian ES8 starts at $69k, with BaaS the price goes down to $59k, that's $10k off and you pay $159/month for the 75 kwh battery. That $10k deduction divided by $159 its 62.8 months equals to 5.2 years. If you keep the same car and the same battery for over 5.2 yrs than yes, more expensive. Keep in mind the following benefts during those 5 yrs: 1) no more battery degradation issues on your side, 2) if a new battery tech comes up on the 75 kwh battery you can have it for free (like a solid state 75 kwh battery, nio upgraded freely in China all users of the old 70kwh to the new 75 kwh when it will be available), 3) upgrade battery to a higher capacity like 100 or 150 kwh if you need or want. Now going back to the math, if you want a new larger battery fron any other car company what do you do? You sell your current one and buy the same model with upgraded battery. The cheapest Tesla model S is starting at $69k, if you want a biger battery then the next cheapest starts at $91k, a difference of $22k upfront. If you divide that by the number of months in 5.2 yrs you will end up with a number greater than $350/month. Downside? No upgrades to battery, you will need to buy a new car to have a new tech battery, degradation it's in your pocket as well. I know it's a long reply, just keep an open mind on these :)
Well, Nio could offer the tecnology to other manufacturers. Where's the problem? As a manufacturer you get a working/running and experienced system. Only have to change design underneeth to fit Nio's battery type in your models. I see no big deal in adopting it ... if there's interest in it.
couple more benefits that Bjorn can include for EV that has battery swap capability, replacing a defective battery easily and upgrading to a 100/150kw battery from a 75/80 kw battery temporarily for a road trip.
@@rogerstarkey5390 you can either charge the 100kwh like a regular EV or temporarily swap for a 75kwh in 5 min and go about your trip ~300km. You can later find a different 100Kwh to swap down the road, no problem.
So, I'm a bit skeptical about that. You mentioned the problem that every car manufacturer would need a separate network of swap stations.You'd have a separate network for NIO, another for Tesla, another for Volkswagen and so on. Well, it's even worse. Because each manufacturer has multiple car models. They can have same or similar batteries, but only so far. Smaller cars can accomodate only smaller batteries, bigger cars would want bigger ones (both because of capacity, but also for structural support). Well, they could create some kind of universal swap station that has a stock of small batteries and a stock of bigger batteries (not speaking about capacities, but about dimensions) and can choose the right one for that car (that probably makes the station bigger and more expensive, but whatever). Furthermore, it limits forward development. Let's say the manufacturer figures out they need to switch from 400V to 800V architecture or have a different connector or better BMS or a different „shell“ of the battery is better for crash safety. They now need to update all their swap stations to incorporate even more battery options. That doesn't really scale if people want to have more than 5 kinds of cars to choose from. The charging stations are universal and standardized, no matter the battery. Who knows, maybe all the parking spots at highway rest points will get their charger cable and it won't be „reserved for charging“ anymore, simply parking. Maybe with some kind of smart routing of power from the actual chargers to the cables (car either charges fast and the charger can then power another cable, so there's only few of the very powerful ones, or is one of these slower ones/filling to 100%/having long lunch, so it connects it to a slower one or disconnects when full).
Btw. The reason fast charger isn’t the future is the grid cannot handle the load for too many cars to charge together. Battery swap is a big buffer it’s charged full at night so the load is smooth during the day
Fast charging can work quite well though with battery backup. Needs lower continuous load on the grid while enabling very high charge rates for a certain time. Most charge curves require high charge rates only for a relatively short time (e-Tron and the new Kia/Hyunday being exceptions).
@@Frygisk you proabably didn't ever live in a big city, where over 70% of people lives, they don't have their parking spot, let alone parking spot with charger installed. in shanghai each parking spot cost 50k USD, no joke
@@Frygisk LOL easier said than done, even Toyota brought up this point for not making EVs. Just look at big developed places that are having energy issues Japan imports power from other countries a big exporter of power is France to Japan. LA and Las Vegas other cities in the West coast have rolling black outs because of the same constraints. Texas almost melted down a couple of months ago because it got a little cold and didn't have enough energy. China is having issues with power and has recently had blackouts.
Bjoern, I think you are missing the point, that several normal charging stations can serve any car, but if every manufacturer needs to create its own battery swapping station then the investment as well as the space of all battery swapping stations combined is well exceeding the one for normal charging stations. And by the way, my assumption is, that the mass produced supercharger stations by Tesla in China cost probably almost a magnitude less than you indicated (which is probably the cost for non mass produced charging stations). At the end Nio needs even more chargers when they are charging 13 batteries slowly in parallel. I mean they are likely relying on the same components like normal charging stations. And the housings of normal stations are likely much cheaper than the climate chamber of Nio. So I doubt that a Nio battery swap station can be cheaper (also adding the costs for the 13 stored batteries) than a bunch of supercharger stations.
I think battery swap could work under different circumstances too. You could use the “stored” batteries as Grid Buffer to get a revenue on them. That way they might even earn some money without anyone swapping any batteries. Even if you own your battery pack they could allow you to downgrade or upgrade your pack. For a one time payment. This could be especially beneficial to the used car market. Lastly my hope would be that a car manufacturer that can automatically swap batteries is more likely to have different battery packs interchangeable between the cars so you might profit from new technologies without purchasing a new car. Granted most of this is in total contrast to the planned obsolescence that most manufactures seem to like quite much. That’s why we might never see something like that.
As a person who invested in Nio, I might be in a subjective position but this is my opinion. Let me explain why the battery swap system is a very good option for any ev in the market. People keep comparing electric cars as old smart phones with replaceable battery and saying that battery swap for ev is unnecessary. Is there anyone who thinks that an electric vehicle is so cheap that if the battery doesn't charge well after several years of usage, it can be easily changed just like smart phones? Also, if you think vice versa, if some company releases some cheap and high-performance battery in the future, you probably need to take it the original ev dealer and probably will end up spending tens of thousands of dollars to replace it or if you can't afford to pay that much,you may need to throw that ev away. These days, battery technology is evolving every year, and if there is no easy way to upgrade the ev battery just like upgrading your hard drive or cpu for computers, it might be a lot more problematic sticking with just one built-in battery for your ev.
It sounds to cheap for a swappstation. I hope it will be more common with charging at different “endstations”, shopping malls, tourist attractions and so on. Because there is already parking lots..
nio is one of the most interesting and - arguably - promising bev-start-ups in china and sports a hard-core fan base reminiscent of tesla’s. however, i am skeptical about battery swapping. it works on the technical side, sure. but as an insular solution it will not be economically sustainable over the long haul. steady progress in battery technology will make swapping obsolete rather sooner than later.
Actually, it would be the other way around. As a person who invested in Nio, I might be in a subjective position but this is my opinion. Let me explain why the battery swap system is a very good option for any ev in the market. People keep comparing electric cars with old smart phones with replaceable battery and saying that battery swap for ev is unnecessary. Is there anyone who thinks that an electric vehicle is so cheap that if the battery doesn't charge well after several years of usage, it can be easily changed just like smart phones? Also, if you think vice versa, if some company releases some cheap and high-performance battery in the future, you probably need to take it the original ev dealer and probably will end up spending tens of thousands of dollars to replace it or if you can't afford to pay that much,you may need to throw that ev away. These days, battery technology is evolving every year, and if there is no easy way to upgrade the ev battery just like upgrading your hard drive or cpu for computers, it might be a lot more problematic sticking with just one built-in battery for your ev.
I have heard somewhere that Tesla got some money back then for just offering battery swap as a possibility. Some sort of insentive back then. Tesla shut down that program as soon as that insentive ended. I'm probably completely wrong, but you could take this as a sort of rumor.
Tesla introduced battery swap, as there was a tax incentive, if i recall right. EIther way, even for NIO, it's a premium option. You can still charge it normally otherwise. And once Tesla moves to the structural battery pack, the whole idea of battery swap is impossible.
If Elon Musk claim about the car motor having a million miles life cycle is true, do you think a battery of 200,000 miles is enough for the life of the car? Not a chance.
@@anvoong2510 eh ? what ? Have you even watched the battery day video ? There's a reason they are moving to the new battery form factor. The battery will be more durable than the car.
Better place went bankrupt in the 00' too many breakdowns of their swapping stations and exuberant subscription fees for the EV owners! Have they improved? Edit; Björn knows the story! Then they focused on Renault Kangoo and Fluence only.
I think battery swapping makes sense if you don't have a place to charge consistently but at the same time infrastructure is getting better so this might not be an issue for to long. Where I think it makes the most sense is if you have abdefect in the battery then replacing with ease and quickness should be the goal. I think these battery swap units should be located at the service centers. I'm all in on Tesla's structural battery but would like to know the plan and steps to remove that battery if it's defective or end of life and I need to replace it. Building the car around the battery sounds great but don't want to hear that in order to change the battery they need to take the whole car apart. 😫
Battery degradation likely to be a forever thing. Replacing the defective battery will cost a fortune and if built-in to the car then too bad for the owners. If Tesla claim that Tesla motor life cycle is one million miles then good luck. Quantum Scape recent claim of 240,000 miles life cycle in the lab is likely to be much less in real life conditions. That’s means you will need to replace the battery at least 4x for the life of the car. Don’t think you want to put out that much money for an outdated 🚘.
I think that in the future we will have car batteries with a capacity of 1 kWh/kg. The Swiss battery research lab Innolith, claims it is on path to 1,000 Wh/kg battery energy. If such a technology becomes available, it means an electric car with a 500 kg. battery, will be able to store 500 kWh of energy, which should be sufficient for 2,000 km. real world range (or 1,300 km. at 130 km/h). Then it will only be necessary to charge your car overnight.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Yes, putting 500kwh in a car is useless. But think the other way round. You can go with e.g. 100-200kwh batteries. You'll get great long range performance the cars get much lighter and wayyyy more efficient. Then the power draw on the battery goes down, which expands it's lifespan further.
I think that the only way swapping could work is if the EU forces the manufacturers to set a common standard. But if that works very well for phone plugs, cars have different ranges, so different battery sizes, different format (tall, long, short etc.). How can you convince people to only buy one type of battery, for instance poorer ones to get a big one or rich ones to buy and average size? People have different needs and budgets. Might only work if the range is so big that it does not matter anymore, but even then some will want more. What I want to say is that I do not think it can become an universal standard. Another disadvantage is if one drives often on smaller roads, out of the big towns where you can find swapping stations, you cannot use this technology at all, no one drives for half an hour or more to get to a station. And if all companies make their own stations, it is a huge waste.
Only if You can not charge athome or live in an Apartment building or something like that.. For vacations too…. Twice a year. Most of us only would loose time with battery swap. I never charge underway.. only on vacations. Batteries that are not in cars is a real waste.
Financial would make sence. The problem fot most if us that EV's are more expensive compared to Gas cars. I know that the cost of owning/using is less but those cost are spread over the time of use. When you rent the battery that would safe an 8k-10k purchase price. What would make it almost the dame as ICE. The annual cost of renting a battery would be lower than the price of gas & maintenance of ICE. That could convince more people to move to EV.
The real Problem is, you need at least 30% MORE Batteries for the same amount of cars. And Batteries are the constraint, for at least another 10 years.
If the Supercharger network comes to every town in the world(already planned), battery swap is not needed any more. But till then, it has a niche market. Very good that one company is doing this. Competition is always good for us consumers. Robotaxis will change everything anyway. We have to wait what solution is best, but my guess is that the robotaxi has time to charge at some point and then the wireless charging should be best. In places where there is no time for the robotaxi to stand still, then battery swap could be better. Not enough data... ^^
Very interesting podcast. Battery swap for me is not Future as : The price with that service is not viable as future, so price will make big increase very soon as they are finance by the country (China) The speed of Fast charging will increase faster than the swapping battery stations in Europe. Price for each swapping all included and without help from China will be much more expensive that Nio representatives told you. And the actual price of HPC is going down and down. The price per kWh as nio is selling is not expensive enough and they will be accused of dumping !! I’m sure. On the holidays run, the station will not charge enough batteries per hour sadly if they have success. For me swapping stations were viable if only all the brands went that route to have a kind of standard and make many more batteries swap stations. And an other question, you don’t own the battery but if you have an accident and you brake the battery that you have in your car but that belong to you, who will pay? You, insurance, Nio? Very difficult point. As the battery is less structural, does the car have good crash test results? Cannot wait to see your 1000km challenge with battery swap, and the eventual real gain as those batteries swap station will not always be on your path and long detours. At this time you will save about 10mn per stop on the actual technology compare to good cars charging. For me the future is more about efficiency and fast charging. Look already the difference on the 1000km between a fast charging car like model 3 LR, and a very very fast charging car but not efficient as EV6, about 5 to 10mn per charging stop as you might do less stops with a M3 LR? I think Tesla made huge calculations with real prices and they stopped it as they had to stop evolutions in cars and batteries as they have to keep à way to design, and it what is makes Tesla ahead of all the historical car manufacturers as gigacasting or other technologies. And now Tesla is making 30% net margin on each cars on the last results !! The battery swapping tech is long reflexion that we must have but including everything!! If Tesla was going that route, they will stay with 18650 tech and not move to 21700 or 42800 l, they will not move to LFP or prismatic, and future tech that will come. All of that make it much more in advantage of wireless charging that can charge while you drive!!! And compatible with all the batteries tech and all brand by concept. What do you Bjorn think on all of those items?
Good luck with that one. Partly exposed high power connectors covered with salt and dirt. Swap stations everywhere?. This could work with trucks or buses, not not private cars. Most people happy with EV's on a daily basis never use quick charge, only for long trips. There's a lot of focus on the long range issues, but in reality most people only travel really far 2-4 times a year. If you can manage driving +500km without charging you can afford a pause of 40 min. If not one should consider if you belong on the road.
1. 70% of total vehicles world wide is parked without a secure parking spot fitting slow chargers. 2. Battery Swap stations with known battery resources can work as frequence balancing towards the grid its connected to. 3. Means both energy towards battery swap and fast chargers get cheaper electricity, just like data senters through REC's and PPS's agreements. 4. Battery swap can reduce average kWh resources driven around as dead weight. Drive weekly with a 50kWh pack, and upgrade when its time to do longer trips. Max C-rate within the packs is then adjusted to 0.5C throughout their life. Increasing their cyclelife by 50%.
I am ok with swap, the real.problem with that is that you need more batteries. The worls is battery constrained. I did not run the numbers but I suspect this solution requires more battery volume.
Bjørn says that you only need 3% ekstra batteries for swap. And you can charge the batteries when the grid is not overloaded, and you can get new battery teknologies over time. Old batteries can be used for buffer to the grid, when they have too must degeneration.
I think battery swap is a dead end. I think that swapping the battery will result in wear and possibly corrosion and dirt on the contacts that would not be good and present problems in the long run.
@@bjornnyland While battery swapping may find some small niches today, battery swapping will never become mainstream. There are to many drawbacks compared to the benefits.
An important point to mention is that NIO cars can ALSO fast charge, with CCS. A lot of people I talk to keep discounting NIO because of questions like what if a swap station fail and they will be stranded. I have to keep reminding that swapping is simply an additional option.
good analysis Bjørn :) i have ordered a NioES8.
I'm a NIO owner in Beijing. NIO swap stations is what makes an electric car pretty much similar to a conventional car. I swap 2-3 times a week (average monthly milage 3000km) spending 5-6 min per a swap. I've stopped using my home charger
Very interesting. That sounds so weird consept to me 😅. But I'm happy to hear it works great for you!
It sounds to me that battery swap would work great in many European cities like London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. One argument against EV I often hear is that many people can't charge at home. Battery swap will let you use the EV just like a fossil car.
@@bjornnyland Yes, for me it's 95% charging at home, 4% charging in my friends' places and 1% public charging. So that's why it feels strange. But I believe it's great option for many.
@@bjornnyland they just need to put chargers where people park. even in cities you still need to park the car, even if its not in front of your home. there is no reason the munincipality can put a charger there, or the garage owner.
Batteryswap is the only reason i Will go from my ICE to EV
Since I am from Israel I can tell you the main problem with Better Place.
Since Israel is a very small country it was a perfect location for better place but the infrastructure was not mature enough and cost was too high.
1. The selected car was bad. Renault Fluance was big, heavy and the range was very small (~100km)
2. The number of swapping stations were small
3. Public charging was 11Kw which was very slow.
4. Home charging was very very slow (less than 3Kw)
5. Subscription cost was very high
Not sure where you came up with the wrong assumption that you can't home charge EV cars in Israel... I drive a Tesla in Israel and you can definiately charge any car using any outlet you want .
I personally use Tesla charging station (11Kw) but at the office I use a standard 220V outlet (3Kw).
By the way, you are slowly becoming a very familiar figure in Israel. When I am asked questions about electric vehicles I send them to your channel which in my opinion is the only one that gives accurate truth data about the vehicles. WLTP / EPA / NEDC is all nonsense. There is nothing like your information !!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company)#Israel_electric_grid
@@bjornnyland You are correct but it was true only than. Now you can charge any car you want using any outlet.
Exactly. And I was talking about why Better Place failed back then. Not being able to charge from household socket was one of the reasons that lead to failure.
@@bjornnyland Another Israeli here. Israel was not against EVs back then. There were like 1000 Fluence ZE on the roads. They sold like hot cakes. There's still one in my building with it's own charging port. The real problem was only the cost and lack of support from more manufacturers, because the REAL original limitation was lack of models... despite loving the idea of EV's back then, people waited for other cars and manufacturers to go for it too. But only Renault was in on it, and most people didn't like the model.
Tesla has been selling in Israel for only under a year and already they delivered ~4000 cars last I heard. It might be closer to 6000~ by now. That's only Tesla. MG has been selling the ZS EV for a couple of years now but brand recognition wasn't too good so they only sold like a 1000 units. Skywell, Aiways, Geely, Skoda, Hyundai, Mercedes, only started selling several months ago. Audi started only now. Oil conglomerates were a pain in the ass, slowing EV adoption which is why we're always late to the party.
The real problem is infrastructure. We have a bad history with that BECAUSE of Better Place so normal people are a little skeptic. But the people who know a thing or two about EV's know where it's really at. This time it's totally different. There are fast chargers everywhere, parking lots are being upgraded, new ones are being built with EV charging in mind. Israel is in the forefront of wireless charging and autonomous driving. Moovit is working hard on robo-taxis. Mobil-eye was the first to integrate a camera to cars and they were basically the first driver assist system on the market, from which manufacturers (Tesla included) took notes from. I'm sorry if I sound a bit harsh, but the misinformation about this country has been too strong lately. On all fronts (if you know what I mean.......).
I love your channel Bjorn, been watching for a year now. You're very informative.
BETTER PLACE was also in Denmark for a short time, before they got bankrupt...
Still some old empty "turn off" battery-swap-stations left...
Couple of nuggets to fill some of your knowledge gap of Nio's battery swap. 1. Most Nio battery swap stations are Gen 2 not Gen 1, that is more Gen 2s have been built than Gen 1s. 2. With every swap, Nio battery cloud management system checks the battery for functionality and safety issues. Should there be a problem and the battery efficiency is below a certain threshold, it is removed from the system and send to be repaired or taken out of circulation altogether. 3. Swapping technology allows for effective and efficient recycling should any issues arise within a cell and replaced 4. With advancement in battery tech, swapping allows easy and effective transition by the replacement of old technology with new technology at no or minimum cost. Currently, Nio is switching from a 70 KWh standard-range battery to 75 KWh hybrid of ternary lithium and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells standard-range battery. 5. One can easily upgrade or downgrade battery size depending on needs. Example, suppose in your daily commute, a 70KWh battery is sufficient, but you need a larger battery for a family trip to go an see the Aurora Borealis up north. You can easily upgrade your battery to a larger size, hence minimizing your charging times on your trip. 6. Solar panels can be installed on swap stations to generate power to charge batteries as well as the swap stations can serve as emergency battery backup for the electric grid during emergencies power outage. Very environmentally-friendly, isn't this one of the main reasons people buy EVs. To help solve earth climate change issues. 7. Works well with BaaS. Value of the EV is maintained due to the upgradability of new battery tech for the vehicle. You don't need to buy a new car to get the latest battery technology.
Another great video, Bjoern. I would love to interview you on NIO and all your EV test.
Bjorn I'd love to hear your opinion when you get to try Nio's battery swapping service. I noticed that when you test out ES-8 you spent a lot of time charging. Nio owners in China already find Nio's battery swapping service very essential. Looking forward to your video.
Survival of the fittest I‘d say - every product needs its clients.
And if there’s no need for a feature (like swapping) in a specific country or region you can be sure that it won’t be spread there.
We cannot decline that battery swapping is a success model in China - the biggest market for EV’s. And future will show how convenient it is for people to change(fuel), exchange(extend range with bigger battery) or upgrade (newer battery technology) on a swapping station. Bright future ahead 😀
I don’t see any downsides in having the additional option of battery swap. It gives youthe option of having a fully charged battery within minutes.
One can argue cars stuck with unswappable batteries are bad for the environment. Batteries degrade, fast charging (that still won’t come close to swapping in terms of speed) accelerates battery degradation, new battery technology makes old batteries obsolete etc. These factors will quickly devalue a otherwise good car. That’s wasteful (but good for car companies that want to make money)
One of the biggest improvements in EV's during the last few years is that the CCS plug type has become the only accepted standard in EU (type 1, ChaDeMo is still out there, but nothing new hits the roads at least). Tesla opening up their network means that we have a fully standardized system where every car can charge at every charging station. (almost) No exceptions.
With Battery Swaps we are back to square one. Every brand has its own infrastructure. That sucks. So I'm not a fan. Charging at home/dest chargers 95% of the time and 10-15 minute visits at HPC's once or twice per month works much better. If Nio wants to invest around here, I would prefer them to invest in public CCS chargers.
Usually next to every swap station is a couple of dcfc stations using ccs.
Yes. Battery swapping will never become mainstream. It's just a waste of resources to build out a battery swapping network today.
@@yourcrazybear you know thats what people said about charging infrastructure right?
@@corywhyte2899 "you know thats what people said about charging infrastructure right?"
Instead of asking silly questions you should focus on the fundamentals in this market. People like Tony Seba predicted (a decado ago) that the electric cars would take over based on fundamentals. Electric cars are simple better and cheaper cars, and those kinds of products will eventually take over.
And on that topic. Regular DC fast chargers are the better product. They are cheaper, less complex, more scalable, and the list goes on. We are also seeing a trend where the charging time declines over time, and we will probably see the 10%-80% charging time getting near 10 minutes in the near future. When that happens any investment into a battery swapping station is incredible stupid in most locations. So no. Battery swapping will never become mainstream.
@@yourcrazybear 10% - 80% in 10 mins ? achieved when? how about degradation? time is relevant in this world. if you can achieve this in 20 years , swap stations can be useful for 20 years. and you pay extra for better service. swap battery is merely an extra option. you can always fast charge NIO
This 4k footage is sooo beautiful.
You can't swap 12 car per hour. I say that realistic maximum 8 min. It takes 6 minutes pure swap process plus entering and driving out. So around 8 min in total. Look at videos in real life (second generation stations). And that if everything goes well. NIO also claimed that they charge battery in 40-50 kW. So if you make calculations you will understand why they put 13 batteries. 13 batteries will ensure non stop swap. One battery will be charged (depending on size) in around 1.8 hour (considering 50-40 kW charging speed and some left over capacity). So if agree with charging speed, that means 7,5 cars per 1 hour. Take 7,5 (batteries delivered per hour)*1,8 (charging speed)=13,5 (batteries needed to keep the flow of 7,5/8 cars per hour). So that all adds up. If you take 12 cars, that will no way will manage to ensure non stop flow with 13 batteries.
@@rogerstarkey5390 They will probably have some average percentage of being used batteries sizes in the region and will load swapping bay accordingly. However, that will not ensure battery upgrade for vacation period or holidays because everyone will go for bigger one and that will destroy all the planning. Anyway for daily use that will work. Other problem is degradation. They say "you don't have to worry" YES YOU DO. NIO didn't indicate what is considered to be good condition. Is it down to 95% of original capacity 90%, 85% or maybe even 80%? So you buy a new car and instead of 100% you get lets say 90% of original capacity battery after swap. Worst thing that you will never get your new one back... ever. Its gone :). I don't think that they will through out 90% of original capacity batteries away. And one more important fact. If you arrive to swapping station and you have at least one car in front, that's already 16-18 min not 8. This is almost the time of reaching from 10% to 70% with existing Tesla model 3.
Yes. For the same amount of money invested you can build a higher total throughput charging location with regular DC fast chargers. And if you are in line 3-4 in the queue for the battery swapping station you are not saving any time anymore, and if you wait for your time you just sit idle without charging anything at all. And if one battery swapping station breaks, you lose 100% of your capacity for that charging location, instead of just a fraction if a single charger breaks down.
Great evaluation again, Bjørn, thanx. Hopefully more and more drivers would listen to such arguments, and will understand operating an EV much better. I also like the approach of "at least we've taken out one more fossil car from traffic." 👍 Some has already indicated two additional swap-station benefits you did not mention: 1. Once you go on a longer journey, you can apply for a bigger pack. 2. As battery packs develop and get larger in capacity, later on your car can be "upgraded" again-and-again. While a fossil car just simply stays as it is, and even emitting more and more as it gets older. RE: chaos of lots of supercharger stations: I think gas-station brands sooner or later will experience demand-drop for petrol and diesel fuels, so gradually these station(network)s - that already exist - could be transformed to supercharger stations, ...with already perfect and occupied locations. Great job, Bjørn, please do carry on!
From what i read about the Nio swap service is that the swap stations are mainly in big population centers. Which does make sense. The cars still have fast charging capability (sort of), which means away from those stations you are not stranded. In effect, along heavily used routes and in or close to big cities it does make a lot of sense to have swap stations.
The price difference between swap stations and chargers is of course, at least until there is standardization, a red herring. As every car company would have to build their own swap stations, and of course that would mean 10 or 15 swap stations at highway charging park. So in effect changing over to battery swapping would require standard batteries usable in many different cars.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Population centers simply because there are many many customers, and most do not have their own charging available. Easy to see in china where most people live in huge condo complexes and not in their own house. Same essentially in most of europe. Easy to just drive into a changing station on your way to or from work and get a freshly charged battery in 3 minutes (which is what Nio manages). By the way, Tesla is actually going the same way with larger supercharger sites in the middle of the city, enable on-the-way charging for people living there, they installed a V3 supercharger (12 stalls, able to extend) in the middle of my city for exactly that reason, by the way right next to many other fast and ultra fast chargers.
I do agree that standardization is not going to happen anytime soon. Therefore there is quite a valid argument not to use swap stations for most cars, as the multitude of different swap systems would clutter up the world much more than a few large charging hubs. But of course, that requires longer stops and not everybody loves that.
@@rogerstarkey5390 On long journeys you might be right, although i have to say i usually do need a lot less time than the car does. For those within population centers on their way to and from work it is simply a nuisance, nothing more, nothing less. Which is one of the big appeals of Nio's battery swap stations in China. It can service 20 to 30 cars during the time one needs to fast charge, which means a much higher possible throughput, and a lot less time for the driver to wait.
I know many don't like to hear it, but there is a time penalty to pay for driving electric at the moment. I have a regular commute where i rent a Model 3, and on that i need around one to 1,5 hours more than i need in a gas car. That is around 120 to 180 Euro lost income. Or, to put it another way, getting up at 2:30 in the morning instead of 4:00, and that makes a huge difference. If i could cut down those charging stops with swaps to 10 to 15 minutes, it would make it much more reasonable.
You can charge NIO just like Tesla or any other EV or you can swap your battery. But only in NIO you can swap your battery for the right size and weight that you need in any situation. Small and light battery for economy in city and large pack for roadtrip. And batteries in charging station can be used to store solar or wind energy and balance the power grid, they dont have to lay around and do nothing, they can make money while everyone is asleep storing and trading renewable energy.
Informative and thought provoking. Didn't know about fluence and that only such a low percentage of Batteries lie idle at swap stations
Thanks for the impartial feedback! At the moment I believe battery swapping and more specifically, the BAAS structure has a lot more positives than negatives. I don't think I heard you mention the fact that leasing out the battery via the BAAS model significantly decreases the initial purchase price of the car. When NIO announces their small size sedan during NIO Day I believe they can get the price of the car down to the low $30k USD with BAAS which is very close to the Tesla Model 3 price in China as well as equivalent luxury ICE vehicles in the same category. I see this as a race to convert ICE to EV and BAAS is a big step forward to making that happen.
That will be mentioned in the next video.
No. It's the other way around. Battery swapping have more negatives than positives. And lowering the initital cost on your car is quite irrelevant if it means you pay a premium for the battery swapping. It's the total cost of ownership that matters in the end.
For me a most significant aspect of my Kia Soul is that I charge in my driveway. I save so much time that way that the rare times I have to go somewhere to charge is not a big deal.
In China where there is a high population density and high EV density battery swapping could work. I like to point out that the only thing common in cars these days is the tire valve. Trying to get a standard between manufacturers is near impossible. So each manufacturer has to have their own battery swap stations at a range to allow travel. Nio on one corner, Tesla on the next, Toyota (if they ever get their head out), Volvo etc etc etc. I think the biggest barrier to swapping is not bolts but connections. In the life of an EV it will be rare to remove a battery pack at all let alone a couple of times a month or week. Electrical connections fail. Always, Jack Rickard said "I never met a connector I liked" some last longer but frequent use of electrical connectors will lead to failure.
I think most people will primarily charge their car with an 11 kW homecharger. Then the biggest advantage of the NIO battery swap program is, that you can now buy a NIO ES 8 with a 100 kWh battery and 400 km. real world range, and in 2023 swap your 100 kWh battery with a 150 kWh battery, and then you have a NIO ES 8 with 600 km. real world range. Maybe in 2028 you can swap your 150 kWh battery with a 200 kWh battery, and then you have a NIO ES 8 with 800 km. of real world range.
i think most people cannot charge at home
@@sumsagro1299 Depends on the country, but about 50% people living in the Western world can charge at home.
Hi Björn, cost-wise you are not right. The battery swap stations also have to charge the batteries. If you want to have a throughput of 12 batteries per hour, you have to charge 12 batteries per hour. That means you have to install the whole charger tech as well for swapping stations.
Unfortunately I am right. If you paid attention to the video, I mentioned that a gen 2 swap station needs 1250 kVA. That's roughly 1.2 MW. It chan charge all batteries at the same time.
@@bjornnyland yes, but not for 250k€ over all. The 250k€ should be for the swapping station itself. Right?
@@bjornnyland In order to match the total throughput of 12 regular fast chargers you will need to charge your 12 batteries in the station just as fast you would with regular chargers. The problem here is that even if you build out your charging infrastructure in the station to handle this, you are left with a lot of extra investments to handle all the machinery for the actual swapping of batteries, maintainence, etc. All of this money could have been spent on building more regular chargers instead and thus increasing the total throughput further. All the batteries inside the station could also have been put in cars that sells with high margins, which would result in even more money that can be spent on further increasing the total throughput.
Yeah, as one or two others have said. This only works if you are in a major city. Broadband technology has been around for 15-20 years, but living 40 minutes outside a city I still only get the base 10Mbps service. In London people have super fast broadband, they are rolling out 5G, there are high speed EV charging stations etc. It will always be city centric. There is nothing more convenient than fully charging my car overnight so it is ready to go every morning. I can see battery swap as a great way to upgrade, or during an annual service.
Nio has their own super chargers too. Nio’s swap station is by default gonna be the standard in China and power storage to power the grid in the future.
You are absolute brilliant. Not many people understand battery swap. It’s game changer. 5000 in 2025.
CATL, NIO, and 6 major banks in China formed a separate company for battery as a service. I can see a possible future where the battery lease and the battery swap network can be accessible from other manufacturers
No. Battery swapping will never become mainstream. It's just a waste of resources to build out a battery swapping network today.
@@yourcrazybear How will the robo-taxis be charged?
i think we need a combination of the three technologies (cabled charger, wireless charger and battery swap).
Nio has patented wireless charging tech ^^ they are working on it.
I don't think we need wireless charging or battery swap at all. When charging times comes down to 10 minutes we don't need another way to charge.
@@yourcrazybear well you clearly dont get the big picture :D First of all, by the time you can fully charge a battery within 10 minutes, a swap will replace your battery in a few seconds. But with that aside, its not just about charging the battery. It's also about battery management, diagnosis, recyclability, battery storage and of course upgradability, flexibility and 0 degradation guarantee for the customers. All this together brings the cost of batteries down too, so its also more economical when it scales further. You are missing out on so much when your car is stuck with a built in battery... btw, having to get out of the car to drag a stupid cable and then having to wait till your car is charged on top of that is just an annoyance. We need a solution that beats the gas station experience. With swaps you just give the command and your car takes care of the rest autonomously. Wireless charging on the other hand can compensate to swaps very well. for example in private parking spaces where people want a cleaner setup without cables etc. but of course that's more of a preference thing, not a replacement of the wired charging.
I've seen a lot of comments saying that, the swapping station is proprietary and every brand has its own infrastructure would be chaos. This is true, but I've never heard anyone complain that many of the existing supercharger stations are also proprietary, such as Tesla's (but I've learned that Tesla is planning to open their supercharge stations to other brands).
In fact, you can see a swapping station as another type of supercharger station that takes up less space and gets you fully charged faster, while also giving you the option to upgrade to the latest battery technology and never have to worry about battery degration. For an EV with non-replaceable battery, you'll see the value after three to four years of battery wear.
Ideally, a full charge in minutes (that gives you long range) or even wireless charging would be best. But if you know enough about battery technology development, you will find that this is never possible.
Bjorn is correct to focus Battery swap from perspective of population density and housing type where car garages are not common in many other countries. There is also benefits of upgradeability and degradation. Another important factor to add on that is not mentioned, 5 minute charge/swap to go from 0% to 100% is extremely important for other use-cases such as Taxi service, ROBOTAXIS, Road Tripping, Business Trips can benefit greatly from battery swaps.
Sure. It may find some small niches in the near future.
Betterplace was operating in Denmark as well. There was a battery swapping station right next to where Køge Supercharger is located today.
When Renault ZOE was introduced, it did not support battery swapping, so confidence in betterplace dropped and they closed. Renault offered Fluence owners to buy back their cars, but some people kept them and I still see some of them driving here in Denmark
Here is how it looked like to do a battery swap at betterplace in 2012 (not my video) ruclips.net/video/C-ABR3kgIYk/видео.html
Numbers I saw before was a supercharger station with ~12 chargers was around $250k. They are much cheaper to operate as well. A swap is quicker but they eventually will run out of fresh batteries if a high use location and it will queue up as well. The cost of spare batteries have to be included in the cost as well.
And you have lovely snow ... I miss my snow !!
One BIG detail you missed is that NIO offers free battery upgrades when new battery technology is deployed. Nobody else does this and it’s a main selling point. You need to try it! Nio owners love their nios for many reason, but swaps are a main one. They can charge like a normal car at home and you can swap when you are in a rush somewhere. Their ecosystem is killer, been studying it for a long time.
Agreed. In China today, existing NIO owners can upgrade their battery from 70kwh to 75kwh technology for FREE. The newer 75kwh battery technology has more range, better hot/cold weather efficiency and capability to supercharge.
I actually haven't missed it. It's been shot in a video that hasn't been published yet. Another big detail you didn't mention was the possibility to downgrade.
@@bjornnyland Correct. If you study what they do in China is actually very interesting. They will allow you to upgrade many hardware parts, not just batteries. I started investing in them in 2019 and I’m honestly blown away by their vision. They don’t aim to become the next Tesla, but rather the Apple of EVs. They have a very catchy ecosystem, that is the actual product. The car is the entry. Users start going to events together, buy lots of nio products from the app and basically integrate nio into most aspects of their life. I am watching what’s happening in Norway very carefully and I am sure many people are also interested. Please make more videos on Nio in Norway. Keep up the great work!
Below are the advantages of battery swapping:
1. Don’t need to worry about current battery condition, NIO take care of it.
2.battery can be upgraded when technology upgraded. If you own EV that are not battery swapping you will need to sell your current car and upgrade to a new one.
3. No big lineup and waiting to get your car charged.
4. Maintain your car value when you sell as you don’t need to discount your car price due to battery concern.
5.due to physics more fast charging simply just killing your battery. Also, in cold weather charging is very challenging. I live in Canada we have extreme weather which the temperature drop below -30 degrees. Tesla has problems to charge. Battery swap stations temperature is being control in optimal condition so you don’t need to worry about charging in cold weather.
There are many more advantages and too much to talk about, the last hit. Robotaxi which NIO is a partner with, just think the car can drive to swap stations and automatically swap out the batteries.
Hopefully this resolved people doubt on battery swap stations.
Thank you for your video on explaining NIO to others.
Fluence ZE only had a 3.7kW internal charger.
I owned one with leased battery and the user experience with Renault was terrible. They charged me every month even when the battery was out for repair, there was a limit on kms per year or else you would pay more, they didn't fulfill the promise that they would swap the battery at 75% health, and selling my car was a complete nightmare.
Israel or Denmark?
@@mikafiltenborg2291 Fluence was sold all over europe without battery swaping but with battery lease, mine was in Portugal.
Many people in Europe are against the complexity of swaps, but I can provide my own experience from owning a ES6 in China during 2019. I didn't have the possibility to charge at home because I was living in a condominium (as most people do). After you get used to swapping, going back to sitting 30 minutes at chargers is not nice. Also, a big advantage was when taking longer trips I was able to swap my 70Kwh battery for a 100Kwh for a week or so. And I never planned the road trips according to charger stations, I planned on what restaurant I wanted to eat at instead of getting fast food from gas stations.
Battery swaps make zero sense. The car just doesn't disappear because you live in a condominium, you charge it where you park it.
@@boostav What he wanted to express but left out was that he was living in a condominium so his parking lot was also rented and couldn't install a charging station. This is very common in big cities in China.
@@rogerstarkey5390 No, you pay for what you get. If you rent a small battery, you also pay less. If there are not enough big batteries in times of high demand, you can't upgrade temporarily and it can be an issue though.
@@boostav sorry, I didn't make it clear that the parking there didn't allow for installing a charging wall box. I feel that ~90% of people in big cities in China (and in many parts of Europe) can not charge at home, so swapping makes perfect sense because it replaces the habit of going to gas stations with going to swap stations. You just don't need to change your habits like sitting 30-40 minutes to charge, you don't need to understand coldgating, rapidgating, etc...
@@rogerstarkey5390 you don't seem to be familiar with swapping at all, but I didn't take anyone's battery because I temporary rented the higher one. There are plenty to swap, even 100Kwh, and you can see on the screen before hand how many 100Kwh packs there are in a certain station. You can even reserve it, and you'll be getting that battery when you arrive.
So we have several advantages
- batteries may last longer as they will not have to be charged as fast. Maybe we can make batteries that charge really fast and do not degrade much.
- once a battery goes bust then it already belongs to the ones renting it so they can fix them or recycle them more effectively. Now they have to get the batteries from their owners.
- one can benefit from upgrades as batteries get larger
- swapping is faster than charging so less waiting
- swap stations use less space than chargers and are cheaper
Challenges
- setting a standard for batteries across car manufacturers may be close to impossible but this would provide the best experience for the user as the user may go to any swap station and not to some.
- if some companies do this individually then you are limited to regions where these swappers operate. Going to another country may be a lot different.
- batteries are not like gas containers as they age and give less range.
- one way to need less chargers is to make it easier to charge at home or almost everywhere. This may go hand in hand with local production of electricity.
It is very possible that we may not own so much cars, but rent them. Once they can get autonomous then transportation may be just a service. There are already a bunch of rent a ride like spark, teleport, Hertz and so on.
One of the "unsolved" issues is the yearly holiday trip where you have a peak traffic moment on the motorways in France and Germany to the south. Today you even have queues at gas pumps. With superchargers or swap stations, you come to the same issue of capacity in July/August, but a strong under usage in the rest of the year. Problem stays the same with swap or HPC's. Not easy to solve... But if you look at an average user in Europe today, they do 90% of charging at home, and quite occasionally use HPC as the daily commute is well under the normal battery range. Getting the battery full over night is then more then sufficient. In cities with only public parking, the situation is different.
The homecharging situation will change when more and more ppl who do'nt own a garage or house buy ev's. Therefor swaps could be a solution and the swapstations can help the grid if necessary, preventing blackouts.
It would be interesting to know more about the grid for battery swap vs fast charging.
A swap station could also supply the grid perhaps?
That is the plan. Supply power to the grid when power is expensive and recharge when it is cheap. Also they're putting solar panels on the Gen 2 power swap stations creating a substantial solar power grid.
I would go a step further and say its a NEED. In order Coal and Gas will be reduced, we need a lot of storagecapacity for solar/wind. So Swapstations beside others can help to do this.
It is theoretically possible, but the battery wear caused by the charging and discharging process seem to outweigh the benefits.
Apparently 90% of Norwegian customers chose to purchase Nio with BaaS.
For a good reason. I have a video about this too.
simple really 2 options are better than 1
@@rogerstarkey5390 yeah right, so empty super charger and empty swap station . your in a hurry which 1 you choose to use??
@@christianhadden6720 Battery swapping speed is only impressive when it's barely used. For the same amount of money you could have built more regular chargers instead and getting a higher total throughput at your charging stations. And by putting the batteries in your high margins cars you could have earned quite a lot of money that you could spend on further increasing the total throughput. In other words, battery swapping stations is a waste of money, completely destroys your total throughput when it breaks, and is far from future proof.
@@yourcrazybear nonsense
Battery Swap, as practice by Nio, is the future and best model. Here why:
1- The battery is rented, thus reducing the cost of buying the car
2- User gets upgraded on new battery technology.
3- it is faster than charging with a charger.
Did you forget robotaxis in the future? Robotaxi is a 2.5 trillion dollar market and it is going to be the 'next big thing'. It may not be viable to keep robotaxi charging for 1 hour + and lose revenue during the downtime. Also robotaxi can put in 400-800 miles per day! Battery degradation will be high if you supercharge batteries every day.
No. It will never become mainstream. There are more drawbacks than benefits here.
1. No. While it may reduce the initial cost of the car, it will raise the total cost of ownership over long periods of time.
2. People get a battery that is stuck to one particular format and thus limits future innovations.
3. Only when the swapping station is barely used. For the same amount of invested money you can get a better total throughput by buildiing regular DC fast chargers.
@@yourcrazybear You're right, it will never become mainstream and highly adopted. Battery Swap is an additional optional way to recharge an EV.
But you are dead wrong on #1, 2 and 3.
#1: How will it raise the TCO? It costs 15k to replace a battery after few years. Model S sold in 2015, and that has accumulated over 100k miles have so much problems with their batteries. Meanwhile my 2007 Prius runs like a champ.
#2: You're partially right. The form (shape of the battery housing) is fixed but that doesnt mean the internals and chemical makeup of the battery is same.
#3: Throughput is dead wrong, yet again. A NiO battery swap station, for example, takes 4 parking spots. In a single day, it can swap 250+ cars., assuming it takes 5 minutes each swap. A supercharger can only recharge 96 cars in a single day (4 parking spots X 24 hours), assuming it takes 1 hour to recharge 0-100%. Are you implying 250 is smaller than 96?
@@yourcrazybear Battery swap will be mainstream very soon in China. When you say a different battery format, do you mean triangle or circular? And why you want them in those formats? Just kidding. I think that that current battery format and dimensions should work well for most cars. Unless you are talking about one where the battery is place in the rear like in the Lotus Elija. But I don’t think that is absolutely necessary when the car is all wheel drive. The model S plaid proved that.
In drove a Fluence for a year back in 2014.
Fluence Z.E. was a modified ICE Car, the Trunk was tiny, because the batterybox was located between the backseats and the trunk.
AC Charging was only possible up to 3,7kW no DC. Type 1 Plug.
Battery was 21kWh but more like 16kWh many batteries got under 80% SoH. And Renault struggled to change them out.
Range was 110 for me in winter more like 70 - 80km
But it was fun to drive. :D
And i liked to look of it somehow.
Batteryswap was not available in Germany.
2015 i bought a ZOE Q210 43kW AC Charger FTW!
2019 i got my Model 3 LR AWD totally differed world
For me battery swap is not needed.
For someone thinking batt swap is, in general, more convenient than plug to a HPC, just watch a video of it being done... plug to HPC everyday for me.
Platforms evolve as well as batteries, both in size, shape and tech. People at NIO really thinks that these form factors will function in new cars in ten years? If not, swap stations won’t necessarily have that battery your car needs at that specific moment, or the worse, your battery type is discontinued
That's why nio has patented their battery pack to be fully modular, adjustable and robust. Nio's pack will always remain the same on the outside.
Yes. There is so many drawbacks of battery swapping and this is just one of them.
@@rogerstarkey5390 I don't understand what you are talking about xD NIO's battery pack is always the same size, regardless of capacity and specification. When it comes to the chassis of the battery, it's space is enough for any further advancement in battery technology. after all, NIO is running a company together with CATL (biggest battery maker in the world), with the purpose of managing and supplying batteries for this tech. The trends in battery tech are in weight reduction, efficiency and performance. So NIO's chassis will only benefit as the reduction in weight will bring better ranges to the cars and the pack it's self has patented top notch cooling and fire prevention security so they should be able to push the tech even further. Their packs are made with future proofing in perspective. There are literally no drawbacks of battery swapping. Only advancements to be made.
@@stefanospap6288 just saying that they’re pretty confident that this is the design to go for, for x amount of years / models to come
Geely also has battery swapping. Looking to have 5000 stations by 2025
The battery swap has two points you didn't notice. The initial buying price is much lower because you rent the battery (10k?). The second is that there are high power chargers in the battery swap stations. So, if technology goes in much faster charging times and much higher ranges probably the cost of ownership will increase too. Then, the rent possibility comes to help the sells. The rent is a hidden bought of energy and in fast way. Chipper? We will see. Very good one Bjorn.
I already know about this. It was shot in a video earlier but it has not been released yet.
The total cost of ownership of your car will certainly increase with battery swapping.
@@yourcrazybear probably it will do. But you can access to buy a brand new car...we have to know the monthly payment.
But, what if trucks manufacturers makes standard for their batteries? It can be better than hydrogen trucks!
Really good point
Have you done any napkin math on the breakpoint between when its best to lease the battery or buy it outright? For Norway there is factors like VAT if you buy the battery at a later stage and such.
@@onetwothreefour-s1n That sounds pretty good! What do you think about risk on resale with a leased battery? Lets say you want to sell the car in 3 years and BaaS never really took off (or the potential buyer does not want to lease), then you potentially take a value hit or have to buy a battery with 25% VAT on top or am I overcomplicating things?
I have a video about this coming soon. Short answer: BaaS in Norway is no-brainer if you go for Signature (order before 1st March 2022).
Battery swaps would make sense if all manufacturers use a standard pack format. I personally believe that swapping will remain an urban niche while battery and charging tech improves so much that 15%-80% DCFC sessions last less than 10 minutes at a time on average.
Yes. Battery swapping will not become mainstream in the future.
You posted an interesting Q&A video with NIO that disappeared the same day. Why was it removed?
Battery swap can be made easy if government standardize the physical designs of batteries.
Not necesaryly government. If Nio with theyre partners (banks, investors and insurances) offer the tecnology with good conditions to other manufacturers, i bet theres gonna be a lot who will opt in.
That would just limit innovation. Battery swapping will never become mainstream. It's just a waste of resources to build out a battery swapping network today.
@@yourcrazybear I'm not saying that they should force anyone to go for better swap but having standardized physical design of battery like shape and screws will come handy in Future.
This is what they've done and will be done all over the world to standardize chargers too
@@Bud_Terence Geely is also trying to enter into swapping market and they're much bigger player then NIO in car market (they own Volvo, Polestar, Geometry and other subbrands too) You're correct an alliance of 3-4 major car manufacturers can do this very easily.
First, for battery swaps forget about bolts to hold the battery in place. A better system is required.
Second, if it is to work that a standard "interface" will have to be specified - mechanical and electrical. This means that a standards organization such as SAE or even IEEE will have to be involved.
Everything around us it's hold safety in place by bolts and screws for maintenence... why not recurrent swappable batteries in our cars?
Looks like all 400 NIO battery swap stations can only swap batteries for one car at a time. It takes at least 6 minutes per car. Maximum of 10 cars per hour. That means if you have 5 cars in front of you, you need to wait for 30 minutes in line and then 6 minutes for the swap.
If only few people use it, it may save them time. I can't see this as a replacement for HPC and AC charger infrastructure, only as an addition.
Wireless would be the best option. Megawatt capacity stall(s)? Grid will surely be in lots of pain. Especially supermarket parking lots, having half a dozen reserved parking spots for 'wireless' shoppers, one or a few at the disabled/family parking spots. Parking near flat apartment buildings, where charging at home is highly unlikely could also use a few dozen such spots. No cables no mess.
It's easier to just park your car and plug in a cable, rather than trying to park your car in the exact position to get the full charging speed. It's also easier to service charging stations if they are not buried in the ground.
Structural battery's will end this
No. That is horrible news for customers. The gains in packaging and weight reduction are so small (around 10% compared to non-structural, so basically -50 Kg on a Model3) that are not worth it for the customer. You get stuck with a battery that is not serviceable or repairable anymore due to the enclosure. If the battery or chassis / undercarriage has an issue and needs repairing, the car will get totaled, even if it's only a few years old. It's like in a fossil car the transmission is part of the chassis and if the clutch fails you need to total the car.
Plus, you are stuck with the current technology vs. swapping that can in theory replace the current battery tech with something like Solid state (if that will ever get mass produced) without the need to replace the entire car.
Structural battery pack is bad for costumers...good for Tesla
@@gechichan No. It's good news. The 4680 battery and structural battery pack will add quite a bit of extra range to your car. And if you get in an accident where you actually damage the structural battery pack, your car would have been totaled anyway. Also. Battery swapping puts a limit on future innovation, structural battery pack does not.
With structural battery pack you will get a cheaper car, a lighter car, more range, more safety, and the list goes on.
@@yourcrazybear the extra range touted by Musk at battery Day when it came to structural battery was 13%. And that should be taken with a grain of salt because in presentations you use the best case scenario, but in real life it will most likely be way less probably around 7 to 8%. Not worth it in my eyes, but each their own.
For example, this is what Apple is doing with the SSDs and RAM for their MacBooks - they solder these components onto the motherboard, so they are not replaceable in case of failure. The only advantage is that the laptop is thinner and very slightly lighter, but for the consumer it's a nightmare and the price is the same as before (but Apple makes more). I've had a $2500 MBP go to thrash after 3 years because of this - I much prefer the Windows laptops where you can upgrade the RAM / SSD / etc
@@gechichan "the extra range touted by Musk at battery Day when it came to structural battery was 13%. And that should be taken with a grain of salt because in presentations you use the best case scenario, but in real life it will most likely be way less probably around 7 to 8%. Not worth it in my eyes, but each their own."
I would guess that they use the EPA testing scenarios to come up with the 13% range increase. Of course the range increase will not be as much if you only drive on the highway. But it's not only more range you get as a customer, you also get a lighter car, better safety, a cheaper car, and the list goes on.
"For example, this is what Apple is doing with the SSDs and RAM for their MacBooks - they solder these components onto the motherboard, so they are not replaceable in case of failure. The only advantage is that the laptop is thinner and very slightly lighter, but for the consumer it's a nightmare and the price is the same as before (but Apple makes more). I've had a $2500 MBP go to thrash after 3 years because of this - I much prefer the Windows laptops where you can upgrade the RAM / SSD / etc"
That's a bad comparison comparing hardware like RAM against hardware like EV batteries. While it's easy and relatively cheap to switch components like RAM yourself, the same will never be true for EV batteries.
GAC and Xpeng already revealed 480 kW DC chargers, so this technology can be available quite fast. GAC is already selling the GAC Aion V SUV in China with a 150 kWh battery, which can charge from 10 - 80 percent battery state with a speed of 480 kW all the way to 80 percent battery state.
@@rogerstarkey5390 It’s all hyped, you should check out the charging of the Porsch Taycan 900v architecture. IMO, currently battery technology is not ready for 900v architecture. Not until solid state battery becomes available.
How does it work when there is a line? Just like waiting at the pump again
Yeah pretty much the same experience as waiting for a pump....much faster than waiting for a charging station
Hold the line.... And wait🤣
🚙🔋🔄🔋
Actually, the Nio app can tell you the number of people in the queue as you get closer to the station. Also, it tells you the % charged and # of KWH of available batteries. Should you find the queue too long for to liking, you can easily go to the next station.
As an experienced user I agree with everything Bjorn says about NIO swap technology
Tesla only did battery swap as box tick for CARB credits.
If we want to consider battery swap as a future solution, the batteries should be standardized, so as to have a sufficiently dense network of stations to avoid having to make long detours to recharge. This is what is being done with fast DC chargers, which will soon allow all vehicles to be recharged, whatever their make, as long as they have a type 2 socket.
With battery swap, each manufacturer should achieve an equivalent density so that users do not have to make too many detours to recharge. Can you imagine stations of each brand (VW, Mercedes, bmw, tesla, Nio, MG, peugeot, renault, etc.) grouped every 200 km? If users have to make an extra 15 or 20 minute detour, this will make battery swap pointless, because this time will be enough to recharge on a fast charger, and will be an opportunity to take a break. I doubt the relevance of battery swap on a large network. It may be worthwhile in very dense areas.
Another point to address is the lack of competition if the batteries and swap stations are attached to the brands. The customer becomes a prisoner and has to pay the price fixed by the manufacturer, without the possibility to choose another network, except maybe to go to a fast charge station...
IMHO battery swapping is not gonna survive longterm. Once wireless charging is fast and cheap enough, it will replace the swapping. Don‘t get me wrong - big fan of swapping this is the next step - but EV‘s have so much more potential to unleash and battery swapping is just one step in the charging evolution. So looking forward to the bright future 😀
@@rogerstarkey5390 Thank you for your wise words.
@@urs91174 Yes. Battery swapping will not become mainstream in the future.
@@yourcrazybear I like a 360 degree view on things. And that only works by listening to other opinions and thoughts. What in particular do you think is gonna make swapping fail in the long term? Of course others invited too to share their thoughts.
Currently there are 199 Gen1 stations and over 400 Gen2 stations
Thank you for the info. My assumption about 8 average per swap station was wrong then. The correct number is 10. But that doesn't change much of the estimations I did.
@Thomas Correct. I mentioned this several times during the video. But what I was talking about here was the *average*.
I don’t like structural cells, and I don’t like swaps. So I am on fence, too. I think best is battery improvements + charging improvements.
I thought you sad “no” to filming in 4K? 😉
Meanwhile: great content from you 👏🏻
It's just one video. About 1 of 200 video. And no editing done. What I talked about was to shoot *everyting* in 4k and edit everything in 4k and store everything in 4k. Big difference.
@@bjornnyland It’s just one feedback. I understand the hassle, work and all that, but from a viewers point I think it would lift the channel/content even more, even RUclips compresses the 4K content a lot. Just my opinion and feedback - not criticism 😄 good luck
But bateryswop station can be used as a batery storage to balance the grid. Buying cheep electricety and then selling it thrugh batery swap. Please get info from BYD. I think that e trucks and e busses with V2G will allso when parked by charge infracture act as batery storage.
As far as I know NIO battery swap system has become a national standard of China, that means other car companies can also join the battery swap network if they want to. Of course there will be some restricts like battery voltage etc, I don't know too much about tech details but it should not be too hard to make the swap station compatible with different size of cars/batteries.
Bjorn - Clarification - In case of NIO, even if you own the battery, you are still eligible for swaps. So basically swaps for all.
Not according to what I heard from Norwegian Nio people. In order to swap in Norway, you *have* to change to BaaS.
This is true in China but not in Norway, Mr P confirmed this too. Norway only BAAS is eligible for battery swap.
@@bjornnyland I see. Thanks.
@@jasonkleung Thanks.
Battery swap is quite an old concept. It was first used in London in 1897 for electric taxis.
if I remember correctly, the Renault drivers found it uneconomical. The cost of leasing the battery was too high if they did not do many miles/kilometers.
the monthly cost for rental in Nio ecosystem is not that high ~100 eur/month for the 75 kwh battery
@@serbansimut9317 That sounds pretty expensive in the long run.
@@yourcrazybear when you dig a little it's not. Let me tell you why. When choosing BaaS you will have a deduction from the current price. An Norvegian ES8 starts at $69k, with BaaS the price goes down to $59k, that's $10k off and you pay $159/month for the 75 kwh battery. That $10k deduction divided by $159 its 62.8 months equals to 5.2 years. If you keep the same car and the same battery for over 5.2 yrs than yes, more expensive. Keep in mind the following benefts during those 5 yrs: 1) no more battery degradation issues on your side, 2) if a new battery tech comes up on the 75 kwh battery you can have it for free (like a solid state 75 kwh battery, nio upgraded freely in China all users of the old 70kwh to the new 75 kwh when it will be available), 3) upgrade battery to a higher capacity like 100 or 150 kwh if you need or want.
Now going back to the math, if you want a new larger battery fron any other car company what do you do? You sell your current one and buy the same model with upgraded battery. The cheapest Tesla model S is starting at $69k, if you want a biger battery then the next cheapest starts at $91k, a difference of $22k upfront. If you divide that by the number of months in 5.2 yrs you will end up with a number greater than $350/month. Downside? No upgrades to battery, you will need to buy a new car to have a new tech battery, degradation it's in your pocket as well.
I know it's a long reply, just keep an open mind on these :)
Nio battery swap will be like Tesla chargers..... Exclusive! Do some people like exclusivity .... they love it!
Well, Nio could offer the tecnology to other manufacturers. Where's the problem? As a manufacturer you get a working/running and experienced system. Only have to change design underneeth to fit Nio's battery type in your models. I see no big deal in adopting it ... if there's interest in it.
couple more benefits that Bjorn can include for EV that has battery swap capability, replacing a defective battery easily and upgrading to a 100/150kw battery from a 75/80 kw battery temporarily for a road trip.
@@rogerstarkey5390 you can either charge the 100kwh like a regular EV or temporarily swap for a 75kwh in 5 min and go about your trip ~300km. You can later find a different 100Kwh to swap down the road, no problem.
At 25:20 the BMS should virtually disconnect a faulty cell. You would only lose a small fraction of battery capacity, basically unnoticeable.
Not unnoticable at all. I have experienced it and it was significant reduction in capacity.
ruclips.net/video/_EfKlY61yw8/видео.html
Ok, well in theory you shouldn't notice... 🤓
So, I'm a bit skeptical about that. You mentioned the problem that every car manufacturer would need a separate network of swap stations.You'd have a separate network for NIO, another for Tesla, another for Volkswagen and so on.
Well, it's even worse. Because each manufacturer has multiple car models. They can have same or similar batteries, but only so far. Smaller cars can accomodate only smaller batteries, bigger cars would want bigger ones (both because of capacity, but also for structural support). Well, they could create some kind of universal swap station that has a stock of small batteries and a stock of bigger batteries (not speaking about capacities, but about dimensions) and can choose the right one for that car (that probably makes the station bigger and more expensive, but whatever).
Furthermore, it limits forward development. Let's say the manufacturer figures out they need to switch from 400V to 800V architecture or have a different connector or better BMS or a different „shell“ of the battery is better for crash safety. They now need to update all their swap stations to incorporate even more battery options. That doesn't really scale if people want to have more than 5 kinds of cars to choose from.
The charging stations are universal and standardized, no matter the battery. Who knows, maybe all the parking spots at highway rest points will get their charger cable and it won't be „reserved for charging“ anymore, simply parking. Maybe with some kind of smart routing of power from the actual chargers to the cables (car either charges fast and the charger can then power another cable, so there's only few of the very powerful ones, or is one of these slower ones/filling to 100%/having long lunch, so it connects it to a slower one or disconnects when full).
Btw. The reason fast charger isn’t the future is the grid cannot handle the load for too many cars to charge together. Battery swap is a big buffer it’s charged full at night so the load is smooth during the day
Improve the grid then. But 90% of daily charging will be AC, which we already have a suitable grid for.
Fast charging can work quite well though with battery backup. Needs lower continuous load on the grid while enabling very high charge rates for a certain time. Most charge curves require high charge rates only for a relatively short time (e-Tron and the new Kia/Hyunday being exceptions).
@@Frygisk you proabably didn't ever live in a big city, where over 70% of people lives, they don't have their parking spot, let alone parking spot with charger installed. in shanghai each parking spot cost 50k USD, no joke
There are only 13 batteries in the swapping station. That means you can benefit from night charging only in the first 13 swaps during the day.
@@Frygisk LOL easier said than done, even Toyota brought up this point for not making EVs. Just look at big developed places that are having energy issues Japan imports power from other countries a big exporter of power is France to Japan. LA and Las Vegas other cities in the West coast have rolling black outs because of the same constraints. Texas almost melted down a couple of months ago because it got a little cold and didn't have enough energy. China is having issues with power and has recently had blackouts.
Yay 4K! Please go on with this as Standard Resolution. Norway looks way better in 4k 👍
Not gonna happen. As already said too many times before.
Bjoern, I think you are missing the point, that several normal charging stations can serve any car, but if every manufacturer needs to create its own battery swapping station then the investment as well as the space of all battery swapping stations combined is well exceeding the one for normal charging stations. And by the way, my assumption is, that the mass produced supercharger stations by Tesla in China cost probably almost a magnitude less than you indicated (which is probably the cost for non mass produced charging stations). At the end Nio needs even more chargers when they are charging 13 batteries slowly in parallel. I mean they are likely relying on the same components like normal charging stations. And the housings of normal stations are likely much cheaper than the climate chamber of Nio. So I doubt that a Nio battery swap station can be cheaper (also adding the costs for the 13 stored batteries) than a bunch of supercharger stations.
I didn't miss this point at all. I already talked about it in the video. *You* missed the point ;)
Battery that's around 65kWh and able to sustain 250kW for 10 min throttling afterwards is more than enough for me.
I think battery swap could work under different circumstances too. You could use the “stored” batteries as Grid Buffer to get a revenue on them. That way they might even earn some money without anyone swapping any batteries.
Even if you own your battery pack they could allow you to downgrade or upgrade your pack. For a one time payment. This could be especially beneficial to the used car market.
Lastly my hope would be that a car manufacturer that can automatically swap batteries is more likely to have different battery packs interchangeable between the cars so you might profit from new technologies without purchasing a new car.
Granted most of this is in total contrast to the planned obsolescence that most manufactures seem to like quite much. That’s why we might never see something like that.
I like to own my battery and benefit from structural battery design, but I think it's nice to have options to suit peple with different needs.
Try it. Can't wait to see your surprising face. XD
As a person who invested in Nio, I might be in a subjective position but this is my opinion. Let me explain why the battery swap system is a very good option for any ev in the market.
People keep comparing electric cars as old smart phones with replaceable battery and saying that battery swap for ev is unnecessary. Is there anyone who thinks that an electric vehicle is so cheap that if the battery doesn't charge well after several years of usage, it can be easily changed just like smart phones? Also, if you think vice versa, if some company releases some cheap and high-performance battery in the future, you probably need to take it the original ev dealer and probably will end up spending tens of thousands of dollars to replace it or if you can't afford to pay that much,you may need to throw that ev away. These days, battery technology is evolving every year, and if there is no easy way to upgrade the ev battery just like upgrading your hard drive or cpu for computers, it might be a lot more problematic sticking with just one built-in battery for your ev.
It sounds to cheap for a swappstation. I hope it will be more common with charging at different “endstations”, shopping malls, tourist attractions and so on. Because there is already parking lots..
nio is one of the most interesting and - arguably - promising bev-start-ups in china and sports a hard-core fan base reminiscent of tesla’s. however, i am skeptical about battery swapping. it works on the technical side, sure. but as an insular solution it will not be economically sustainable over the long haul. steady progress in battery technology will make swapping obsolete rather sooner than later.
Actually, it would be the other way around.
As a person who invested in Nio, I might be in a subjective position but this is my opinion. Let me explain why the battery swap system is a very good option for any ev in the market.
People keep comparing electric cars with old smart phones with replaceable battery and saying that battery swap for ev is unnecessary. Is there anyone who thinks that an electric vehicle is so cheap that if the battery doesn't charge well after several years of usage, it can be easily changed just like smart phones? Also, if you think vice versa, if some company releases some cheap and high-performance battery in the future, you probably need to take it the original ev dealer and probably will end up spending tens of thousands of dollars to replace it or if you can't afford to pay that much,you may need to throw that ev away. These days, battery technology is evolving every year, and if there is no easy way to upgrade the ev battery just like upgrading your hard drive or cpu for computers, it might be a lot more problematic sticking with just one built-in battery for your ev.
I have heard somewhere that Tesla got some money back then for just offering battery swap as a possibility. Some sort of insentive back then. Tesla shut down that program as soon as that insentive ended. I'm probably completely wrong, but you could take this as a sort of rumor.
Tesla introduced battery swap, as there was a tax incentive, if i recall right. EIther way, even for NIO, it's a premium option. You can still charge it normally otherwise. And once Tesla moves to the structural battery pack, the whole idea of battery swap is impossible.
If Elon Musk claim about the car motor having a million miles life cycle is true, do you think a battery of 200,000 miles is enough for the life of the car? Not a chance.
@@anvoong2510 eh ? what ? Have you even watched the battery day video ? There's a reason they are moving to the new battery form factor. The battery will be more durable than the car.
Better place went bankrupt in the 00' too many breakdowns of their swapping stations and exuberant subscription fees for the EV owners! Have they improved? Edit; Björn knows the story! Then they focused on Renault Kangoo and Fluence only.
I think battery swapping makes sense if you don't have a place to charge consistently but at the same time infrastructure is getting better so this might not be an issue for to long.
Where I think it makes the most sense is if you have abdefect in the battery then replacing with ease and quickness should be the goal. I think these battery swap units should be located at the service centers.
I'm all in on Tesla's structural battery but would like to know the plan and steps to remove that battery if it's defective or end of life and I need to replace it. Building the car around the battery sounds great but don't want to hear that in order to change the battery they need to take the whole car apart. 😫
Battery degradation likely to be a forever thing. Replacing the defective battery will cost a fortune and if built-in to the car then too bad for the owners. If Tesla claim that Tesla motor life cycle is one million miles then good luck. Quantum Scape recent claim of 240,000 miles life cycle in the lab is likely to be much less in real life conditions. That’s means you will need to replace the battery at least 4x for the life of the car. Don’t think you want to put out that much money for an outdated 🚘.
I think that in the future we will have car batteries with a capacity of 1 kWh/kg. The Swiss battery research lab Innolith, claims it is on path to 1,000 Wh/kg battery energy. If such a technology becomes available, it means an electric car with a 500 kg. battery, will be able to store 500 kWh of energy, which should be sufficient for 2,000 km. real world range (or 1,300 km. at 130 km/h). Then it will only be necessary to charge your car overnight.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Yes, putting 500kwh in a car is useless.
But think the other way round. You can go with e.g. 100-200kwh batteries. You'll get great long range performance the cars get much lighter and wayyyy more efficient. Then the power draw on the battery goes down, which expands it's lifespan further.
I think that the only way swapping could work is if the EU forces the manufacturers to set a common standard. But if that works very well for phone plugs, cars have different ranges, so different battery sizes, different format (tall, long, short etc.). How can you convince people to only buy one type of battery, for instance poorer ones to get a big one or rich ones to buy and average size? People have different needs and budgets. Might only work if the range is so big that it does not matter anymore, but even then some will want more. What I want to say is that I do not think it can become an universal standard.
Another disadvantage is if one drives often on smaller roads, out of the big towns where you can find swapping stations, you cannot use this technology at all, no one drives for half an hour or more to get to a station. And if all companies make their own stations, it is a huge waste.
Only if You can not charge athome or live in an Apartment building or something like that.. For vacations too…. Twice a year. Most of us only would loose time with battery swap. I never charge underway.. only on vacations. Batteries that are not in cars is a real waste.
Incorrect. That's like saying cars that are not moving are a real waste.
I have a Renault Fluence, let me know if you was to borrow it for a 1000km challenge.
Rather than imagine huge Supercharger sites, imagine every car park having ample 50-70kW inductive charging bays
Financial would make sence.
The problem fot most if us that EV's are more expensive compared to Gas cars. I know that the cost of owning/using is less but those cost are spread over the time of use. When you rent the battery that would safe an 8k-10k purchase price. What would make it almost the dame as ICE.
The annual cost of renting a battery would be lower than the price of gas & maintenance of ICE. That could convince more people to move to EV.
The real Problem is, you need at least 30% MORE Batteries for the same amount of cars. And Batteries are the constraint, for at least another 10 years.
Incorrect. I did the math and you only need 1-3 % more batteries.
If the Supercharger network comes to every town in the world(already planned), battery swap is not needed any more. But till then, it has a niche market. Very good that one company is doing this. Competition is always good for us consumers.
Robotaxis will change everything anyway. We have to wait what solution is best, but my guess is that the robotaxi has time to charge at some point and then the wireless charging should be best. In places where there is no time for the robotaxi to stand still, then battery swap could be better. Not enough data... ^^
battery swap for robotaxis is the way at the moment.
Very interesting podcast. Battery swap for me is not Future as :
The price with that service is not viable as future, so price will make big increase very soon as they are finance by the country (China)
The speed of Fast charging will increase faster than the swapping battery stations in Europe.
Price for each swapping all included and without help from China will be much more expensive that Nio representatives told you. And the actual price of HPC is going down and down.
The price per kWh as nio is selling is not expensive enough and they will be accused of dumping !! I’m sure.
On the holidays run, the station will not charge enough batteries per hour sadly if they have success.
For me swapping stations were viable if only all the brands went that route to have a kind of standard and make many more batteries swap stations.
And an other question, you don’t own the battery but if you have an accident and you brake the battery that you have in your car but that belong to you, who will pay? You, insurance, Nio? Very difficult point.
As the battery is less structural, does the car have good crash test results?
Cannot wait to see your 1000km challenge with battery swap, and the eventual real gain as those batteries swap station will not always be on your path and long detours.
At this time you will save about 10mn per stop on the actual technology compare to good cars charging. For me the future is more about efficiency and fast charging. Look already the difference on the 1000km between a fast charging car like model 3 LR, and a very very fast charging car but not efficient as EV6, about 5 to 10mn per charging stop as you might do less stops with a M3 LR?
I think Tesla made huge calculations with real prices and they stopped it as they had to stop evolutions in cars and batteries as they have to keep à way to design, and it what is makes Tesla ahead of all the historical car manufacturers as gigacasting or other technologies. And now Tesla is making 30% net margin on each cars on the last results !!
The battery swapping tech is long reflexion that we must have but including everything!!
If Tesla was going that route, they will stay with 18650 tech and not move to 21700 or 42800 l, they will not move to LFP or prismatic, and future tech that will come.
All of that make it much more in advantage of wireless charging that can charge while you drive!!! And compatible with all the batteries tech and all brand by concept.
What do you Bjorn think on all of those items?
Good luck with that one. Partly exposed high power connectors covered with salt and dirt. Swap stations everywhere?. This could work with trucks or buses, not not private cars. Most people happy with EV's on a daily basis never use quick charge, only for long trips. There's a lot of focus on the long range issues, but in reality most people only travel really far 2-4 times a year. If you can manage driving +500km without charging you can afford a pause of 40 min. If not one should consider if you belong on the road.
1. 70% of total vehicles world wide is parked without a secure parking spot fitting slow chargers.
2. Battery Swap stations with known battery resources can work as frequence balancing towards the grid its connected to.
3. Means both energy towards battery swap and fast chargers get cheaper electricity, just like data senters through REC's and PPS's agreements.
4. Battery swap can reduce average kWh resources driven around as dead weight. Drive weekly with a 50kWh pack, and upgrade when its time to do longer trips.
Max C-rate within the packs is then adjusted to 0.5C throughout their life. Increasing their cyclelife by 50%.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Insightful...
4K...yay :)
I am ok with swap, the real.problem with that is that you need more batteries. The worls is battery constrained. I did not run the numbers but I suspect this solution requires more battery volume.
Bjørn says that you only need 3% ekstra batteries for swap. And you can charge the batteries when the grid is not overloaded, and you can get new battery teknologies over time. Old batteries can be used for buffer to the grid, when they have too must degeneration.
I think battery swap is a dead end. I think that swapping the battery will result in wear and possibly corrosion and dirt on the contacts that would not be good and present problems in the long run.
Dead end... China has over 600 swap stations and have done over 4 million swaps. They have winter and snow also. Dead end... yes ;)
@@bjornnyland While battery swapping may find some small niches today, battery swapping will never become mainstream. There are to many drawbacks compared to the benefits.
@@yourcrazybear what are the drawbacks for the customer (not for Nio)?
The new xbus apparently will have some sort of battery swap and renting of additional batteries