LIKE if you think Battery Swapping could be the future and SHARE if you want more people to know about its potential. Full description below... How would you feel about an electric car which you could charge from 0-100% in 3 minutes at a cost of around £8? Sounds too good to be true? Let us introduce you to the NIO ES8. This SUV might be big, but it's also agile, and while its price tag reflects the refined design and impressive range, what's really interesting is the battery swapping service offered to all new NIO customers, as standard. In this episode Elliot takes the ES8 out for a drive and shows the 3-minute Battery Swap Station in action. For easy reference, please use the *Timestamps* below... If you enjoyed this, check out Elliots report from the Chengdu Motor Show earlier this week - www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCNjD... And for more on why we are covering what is going on in East Asia, and more specifically in China, please read our latest blog: 'Cancel Culture & Chinese Cars' - fullycharged.show/blog/cancel... Fully Charged is 100% independent thanks to RUclips Memberships (join above) and Patreons (join via www.patreon.com/FullyChargedShow). Online News, Views & Reviews: fullycharged.show LIVE exhibitions in USA, UK & Europe: fullycharged.show/events/ Guidebook to Clean Energy & Electric Vehicles: www.amazon.co.uk/Fully-Charge... Twitter: twitter.com/FullyChargedShw Instagram: instagram.com/fullycharge... *Timestamps* 0:00 Introduction to NIO & Battery Swapping 0:51 NIO - Blue Sky Coming 1:39 NIO ES8 price & statistics 2:55 Nice Action! 3:05 Boot/Trunk Size & 7-seats 3:26 Luxurious Interior, Innovative Instrumentation 4:32 First Drive Impressions 6:17 Battery Swap Station in action 6:50 Battery Swap Starts 7:00 Explanation of Battery Swap 8:03 Cost of Battery Swap 9:50 Battery Swap Finishes 10:02 NIO Power Remote Charging 11:01 Summary on NIO, ES8, Battery Swap etc 11:30 If you liked this, then you'll love these... 12:00 Subscribe & Support
It's enormously expensive to develop the system of battery swapping stations and buying the extra batteries - Does anyone remember 'Better Place' inc? 10 years ago- an American/Israeli battery swapping company who worked with Renault and implemented this system ago in Denmark, Israel, and Australia. Sadly, they ran out of money. I remember them raising over $220Million in one round of capital investment - they may have raised even more in total! What's going to be different with NIO ? 1) They build their own cars, and perhaps aren't reliant on another car company joining them in the battery swapping scheme. (Better Place was really hoping Toyota would join Renault/Nissan) 2) They will be financed by Chinese banks & the government with cheap loans (illegal in the Europe & US) with effectively unlimited funds. Good luck to them. It's a great idea and it's been around since the dawn of EVs.
Did you know, or have you forgotten, that this was tried in Denmark (Israel and elsewhere) some years ago, under the aegis of the Better Place network? The car involved was the Renault Fluence Z.E., and the batteries for used vehicles are still available for rental from Renault dealers. While the NIO concept may fare better than Shai Agassi's concept, viewers may not consider the Chinese concept as so advanced and interesting, compared with Tesla's widespread charging networks.
how is europe with infrastructure to build battery swap stations? it looks difficult to scale since especially with other EV in the market that dont have this feature. it maybe unwise to build a charging station that only can accommodate 1 brand of EV vs all EV. imo battery swap is a must for people to fully adopt the concept of an EV
@@lalalamooone In short: Shitty. Long answer: Where I live (in Austria for reference) the necessary EV infrastructure isn't really given. Yea, we've got (quite a lot of) "public" charging stations, but for example only 19 Tesla Superchargers, whereas Norway got around 848. Electricity is fairly expensive compared to Norway, 16 cents there and 32 cents here (according to tesla average), so you'd pay double for a full charge here. I also think that building Battery Swap Stations would be incredibly difficult here, not only because of regulations but because the people wouldn't support it I guess. BaaS is far, far away here, and the whole EV thing is different from country to country. But- and i want to clarify that - EVs are getting more and more popular every year, so we are going in the right direction.
That is what happens when you underestimate the competition. They move forward living you behind. Happened before with the Japanese in the 70s and 80s. History repeats itself.
Great video. We just passed the national standard of Swapping Battery, GB/T《电动汽车换电安全要求》. Type-I: 1500 swaps for personal cars, Type-II: 3000 times, and Type-III: 5000 for commercial vehicles. Life spam min. 1500 for bolt-type, 5000 for snap-type in 8-10 years, up to 600k km.
Nice video and thank you Elliot for putting all the efforts. The battery swap is a tech which suitable for a mega city like Shanghai because not everyone in Shanghai owns a parking lot. This is a great idea to encourage people to try and buy EVs. Some of the comments are too negative and please be open minded.
Primarily because it is Black Box. That's all we need. To get away from the evil that both internal combustion and the fossil fuel industry's best friends electrification represent.
KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid! Simply drill a deep hole into the desert or seabed, suck out the dinosaur juice, blast it with energy to filter out the crap, put it on a boat, ship it around the world, squirt it into lorries, drive the lorry to a forecourt, fill up a big subterranean bath with it, put a pump on top - Bob's your uncle! What could be simpler?!
China and Arabia will be developing technology like we used to do and it's been reported in the New York Times even that the uranium in the ocean can replace the Black Gold. I have nominated freely available nitrogen as the energy carrier for the rest of this Millennia and Beyond. You take the uranium from where you can get it or wherever you get your good energy and you converted into liquefied gas like nitrogen. That boy was using again I know that people see the word free and they don't trust but the air around us is currently not expensive to use and there is no tax on using it. Same goes for the ocean water. Rightly or wrongly anybody that can get the water into their building can take all the uranium from it they want without paying anybody. You can also use the rhenium appropriately that means you don't waste it on electricity which is very expensive to produce and rather useless for everything that matters but almost all of our energy is actually used for hello? So electricity is good for simulating. But it's time for us to get serious and immediately replace the burning of all fossil fuels. You do that by boiling nitrogen instead. you can fill up a car faster than you can change the battery and it also has far more power then stupid expensive electric motors with Russ belts all over the world having the buildings the tooling and the unemployed eager to work making turbines to do mechanical work without any negative externalities from all kinds of clean renewable energy sources turned into the commodity of energy itself as exemplified by liquefied nitrogen.
@@Dirk_Taggesell YES NYT NEWTON ETC ALL fake news right Bud? Just because your ignorant your not allowed to deny truth by feeble character attacking. Which fact is outside comfort zone Kevin?
@Ian Reid clicking on your profile Mister Reid it shows the beginning of what was the lamest comment in this entire collection where you said that it was not a 3-minute process hello when you go to the haircut place and you have to make an appointment for like tomorrow you call that a 24-hour long haircut?
This is a no brainer and something I've been saying for a decade! I'm in the US. Unless you're going to build a charging network with enough stations and capacity (charging stations are often full), you need to be able to swap batteries. This is just good engineering. Wish I know about Nio last year when the stock was low (my buddy did, though he didn't even know what they made).
It's all about economy of scale, the larger the scale, the more convenient it will be. some viewers complained that different EV makers needs different swap stations, but it's not inconceivable for EV makers to form into an battery alliance, that will narrow the need for different system dramatically, Even if they don't, so what, these are pretty small, and you can fit a dozen different brands of battery swap stations into a parking lot. One way to move forward is to automate the entire process, making it easy enough for the owners themselves to drive it into place and press a button to swap the battery. EVs will be more and more like a consumer product, the idea of having a yearly subscription for battery swap services and not actually own the battery is the way to go.
Even if EV makers don't form a battery swap alliance, it is conceivable that the likes of VAG, who own VW, Audi, Porsche, Seat, Skoda plus trucks and exotics could create a universal standard for their range. For example they could create a battery cell of nominal size 1. A Seat Ibiza could fit 3 cells in line under the floor, a Passat could fit 5 and a Scania could fit 10 stacked like pancakes.
it's just a game of capital, they play the old trick of start ups that burn cash at an unsustainable rate to capture market share and then either go flop or start charging the users
On a bigger scale when a lot if people have electric cars, I think this is not durable. I think that in the next decades they will mainly focus on charging the battery faster. But I like the concept and it definitely has potential.
The cars could be sold without batteries and you just swap out batteries on a regular basis. The older batteries could then be used for home power banks and cars can be refitted with new batteries as technology improves.
This shows that having access tp a large unified domestic market enables you to make cool products. India is also busy with electric cars now. It's time that the West stops staring at what Tesla is doing and makes it easier to start develop new electric powered products (especially Europe). Great video!
@@rogerstarkey5390 True, but the established car companies had 8 years to come up with a decent answer to Tesla. But as this video and other videos from fully charged shows, the best answers are coming from China and even surpassing Tesla.
@@dr.andersonsghost4315 Actually India produces a lot of vehicles. Brands like Maruti, Tata and Mahindra are manufacturing EV or will soon. Let's not forget that India also has a huge domesticl market. Also Indian brands have been exporting vehicles for quite a number of years now, wether under their own brand name or as OEM.
@@richardnedbalek1968 I guess it's by far the Tesla 3. Which shows that the traditional car companies are lagging behind. Besides that, which other car company, besides Tesla, can compete with the onslaught of the Chinese? We are talking about huge traditional cars companies here who, although they have some EV models, don't have anything which can compete with even start ups from 5 years ago.
Could you do another video on the car itself? The main reason, I'm aware, was to demonstrate the battery swapping, but I'm sure a lot of people like myself would be interested in the rest of the car. How much space is in the rear seats as an example, how much luggage space is there with all seats folded? Etc.
I thought the same; "fold the back row seats down and you get more room..." - right, but no view shown of this at all, or the middle-row or front passenger seat area either (and the bit with hand going under the middle console is lost out of frame). More thought on camera angles and internal views would be appreciated! But otherwise an interesting video on the battery swap-out feature. Like others have noted, not sure it is a hugely scalable approach, but has interesting capabilities for battery tech upgrades (solid state/glass, whatever the future holds).
Questions? 1: How long are the OEM batteries warrantied to the original owner/ 2: When you swap batteries does your OEM battery warranty transfer to your car in case the replaced charged battery is somehow defective? John
I'd think in this model all the batteries are owned by NIO, and if you get a defective battery during a swap, they'll just swap it for another one. Just think of the battery as part of the ongoing service, not as part of the product.
I think that's the same kind of deal than when you rent the battery with the Renault Zoe. The battery is still owned by the OEM so they deal with the warranty and replace if it is defective.
@@Findalfen Surely they must have a certain period of time before they say that they won't support these model vehicles anymore? Like, I wouldn't expect them to support this specific model Nio with battery swapping in say 10 or 15 years time. Unless, they keep the exact same battery housing and screw holes across every model in the future, or somehow develop "adaptors" for older models that are installed during a battery swap. But I don't think that is practical or economical.
I'm sure they also have battery pack/individual cell health monitoring systems in place that will allow for pack repairs in house and ensure a long service life for the owner of the battery, Nio. Doubt they have engineered in planned obsolescence for something they own.
Nio is a solid company with great cars. My neighbour and his wife both have one each. By the way their cars are so many on the roads I'm sure they're going to get even bigger. They also have a formula E team if I'm not mistaken.
@sask1930 well, honestly many car startups are always on the verge of bankruptcy. But with the boom of EVs in China plus the subsidies they're getting I think they'll be ok for a while.
@sask1930 It should be pointed out that Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy for many years before their finances stabilise and they started producing profitable quarters.
I put £100 on NIO a few months back and totally forgot about it (as it's in my non-isa account which I don't look at) I checked the other day and saw it was up to £380!
Great Idea put into action, these SUVs are efficient - put 7 people in it and it works well as a people mover for larger families. Love the Battery swap system. keep going NIO.
What an amazing set up ! This is the kind of change we need here in the UK to actually make the EV revolution happen. That and cost, again China beats us there too. It's not as if the quality is poor, that model is high spec and looks amazing for so much less than what we pay for half as plush products over here, it's a shame that in the past the UK has lead change and development yet with EV and the infrastructure the UK is so far behind.
Works fine. BetterPlace ran the concept in Denmark for some years, and we had plenty of slow, salt, etc. It doesn't work for a different reason; it requires the batteries to be fairly similar, so it'll typically only be viable on a few brands and a few models/sizes. And it requires more batteries to be manufactored. Every EV still need a battery in it, but with this there's also a need for extra batteries that can sit on the shelf. The limiting factor in EV production is battery production, so having to make e.g. 10% extra for the same fleet of vehicles is a bit pointless.
@@Nicoleise it reminds me of the fact that some cars have different adapters to charge, what can't they all be the same? Tesla has faster charge, Total different charging stations. I'm jealous because Tesla has a charger at my local grocery store, but none for us regular guys. I know, Tesla put them in, not the store, but it's so convenient.
@@Nicoleise If only car manufacturers defined a new modular battery back standard which could be used on all vehicles. Smaller packs of say around 40kWh and larger cars could have perhaps 3, mid models could have 2 and small cars just the one. That way you could do your regular commute with just one which would cut down on the mass, and if you need to go log distance, plug in more to get you further. Ultimately though, as charging improves this concept of battery swapping is doomed anyway but it would offer some interesting benefits, not least easier recycling if everyone is using the same packs.
Fantastic stuff. I'm driving Tesla X in HK. Love it for many reasons. I remember Israel government together with Nissan were planning this swap concept in Israel some years ago. Never took off. Leave it to the Chinese with their 'can do' attitude. Wouldn't it be great if such battery pack can be swapped by any car brand, a modular build? Nah, never gonna happen. But for the prof market e.g. buscompanies in HK, it's a superbe solution phasing out all them damn diesel buses and trucks within a few years. Government needs to step in to make that happen. Unfortunately our HK government won't consider that... Great video! I've subscribed.
@@ruaraidhmcdonald-walker9524 yeah I remember seeing better place at the 2011 Melbourne motor show along with the new at the time Nissan leaf and Mitsubishi phev concept. I was quite hopeful about EVs back then but our government has done nothing to help uptake in Australia and we have one of the lowest amounts of EVs in the developed world sadly.
@@EHCordes it's amazing with all the people who talk about 20 years into Tesla nonsense I have yet to see anybody pointing out the Tesla engineer's their batteries to do this as well. I understand that was a 'different' company THEN the current predatory world-destroying monster. But it had the same name and many of the same people behind it including the founder. The moral hazard of him collecting additional billions of dollars is not hypothetical. If you don't have that money corrupting he would probably --if you want to give him any credit whatsoever-- have shut Tesla down many many months ago.
Batteries!!! One thing I would hope is electric vehicle manufactures keep a close eye on battery technology. After 50 years of flying R/C models I was able to watch the evolution of electric powered R/C models. It was truly amazing to watch how QUICKLY new technology changed and made the current technology (especially batteries) OBSOLETE. This included but was not limited to just the batteries, but the speed controllers, and motors. I still see this Electric Powered Vehicle business in its first stages of development. So while battery swapping sounds GREAT, it will be interesting to see how the manufacturer is able to implement quick battery changes while battery technology is constantly changing and improving. i.e. last years battery technology was good but this years battery technology is even better and maybe even different. i.e. solid state batteries if and when they are developed. It is fun watching this process and be interesting to see what the future brings. John
I was wondering since the car probably has some self-steering and self-parking feature etc. Couldn't they programm the car to park itself inside the swap station so that there's no need for employees who do that for you?
@@Antipius well back in 2012 when "Better Place" first came out with an operational similar mechanism it was fully automated and driven in by the drivers.
[I'm not going to change the text of my offending words below but I want people who are coming to this comment after it was pointed out to me that I watch the video too quickly or something to know that I'm going to supplement my words in the second reply to the objection soon. Forgive me if I'm out of practice or have just so little practice being wrong. I was in the middle of the video just now watching it at normal speed when the streaming news about Tik Tok hit the fan so I have installed Tick Tock several weeks ago in case this happened that I wanted to go ahead and running at least once before they try to comply with the order and possibly lock me out. Anyways having done that I get the notification of the reply LOL that I've already replied to once but that pulled me back into this video and now I'm going to complete watching it word for word but the design of the video is extremely poor for low-resolution viewers so I'm not able to read the fine print that's on the screen.] "Try actually watching the video folks. What are you guys doing when this subjects is covered in the video? He says that the car drives itself into the shed because there's too much expensive equipment in there to allow the owner of the car to do that deed."
Battery ageing is far less of an issue now than it used to be with cars like the Leaf. But it does strike me that there seems to be no active cooling around the battery in this vehicle.
Battery aging is still a thing btw. They just dont care about it. Who's to say you wont get a 10yr old battery in your car that only actually does half the rated miles in 10 yrs time. We all know about chinas quality control so they wont even care one bit lol.
@@hellopsp180 And also the batteries industry in China is pretty mature now, compare to many other places. Like their BYD and CTLE(I believe) are all great battery suppliers, not only for China's market, also for other companies.
Tesla is the pioneer of the EV but this right here takes it to a different level. Glad to be a part of the NIO roller-coaster from it's IPO days to now. Definitely reaping the rewards now for be patient and knowing how far this company will go for years to come.
This is more like what it will take to make electric cars more mainstream. I posted a comment maybe as much as ten years ago on either RUclips, or a forum, I can't quite remember, saying what I thought it would take. I envisioned standardized battery modules, though there could be several sizes. You would drive into a box marked on a garage forecourt. This could be done by autopilot. On the dashboard you would see your current battery's level of charge and select a level of charge you wanted in increments. After authorizing a battery swap, the car would release internal bolts holding the battery in place(so no one could unbolt your battery from the outside and make off with it). A hatch would open under your car and a robot would undo captive bolts on the battery module to remove it. A replacement would then be fitted and the internal bolts would automatically lock. Your car's movement would be disabled during this exchange procedure. You would be billed for the extra charge. There would be a permanent smaller battery in each car to keep the car's services running. The battery modules could be charged using any source of electrical power, including intermittent renewables when available. The battery packs would need to be monitored for wear levels to ensure people were getting the range they were paying for. Tired packs might have a second life as stationary grid storage before being recycled. It seems we're finally part way there!
I actually did my dissertation on EVs and battery swapping was one suggestion from a survey respondent. All respondents were in the UK. If this technology was made available anywhere, EVs will surely be more widely accepted and would probably drive the prices lower.
Thank you Elliot! Very Informative and impressive! Hopefully Nio will bring this Technology to the US! I would definitely buy a NIO! I love the battery swap! The cars and suvs are beautiful!
Thanks for this video. We all need to see more of different approaches taken in ev development. No industry should stand still or close themselves off to new ideas. I was frustrated with your demonstration of the boot space. After explaining how limited it was due to the extra seating, you then told us we just have to fold those seats down to get "much more". You did the fold down, put your arm out as to say 'ta-daaa', but the next camera shot was from inside the front seat. Wtf? Still enjoyed it, thanks.
For those of you hating on battery swap. You do realize that battery swap works with charging stations NOT against it right? Owners can choose whichever method works best for them. Also, a open battery swap program is a great incentive for both new and used car buyers. You no longer needs to worry about batteries dying out. Because you can just swap it for free. Or at least it is cheaper to replace due to the mechanical construction. Guess which vehicle will be able to hold value in the long term? Tesla?
Wow , China is coming fast I heard a lot about this car , So a German guy driving it in Shanghai saying that he looked for mistakes in this car but couldn’t find any
@@fullychargedshow I think he was referring to another youtube video of a German man who drove NIO and was in an interview in China. "Saw a German guy driving it..."
@@fullychargedshow You're right. It doesn't matter. Almost 100,000 Chinese people have purchased this vehicle and their opinion should count just as much as any German or British person.
Really interesting technology, and about time too! However, as an aside, when Fully Charged reviews a car there is a often a lot of stuff about the driver's area. I know this matters but could we also have a look at the luggage area too please. Open the boot, fold seats down, remove roller blind, and show us how much space there is, or isn't, in the back, please. Many of us don't want to use a big car just to drive ourselves around alone, so knowing how well passengers fit, and how well luggage, Ikea Billy book cases, or washing machines might go in the back would be really helpful. Thank you.
I like Elliot, seems to be a good choice as a correspondent for Fully Charged, just needs some liquid courage in his early days of presenting to look, stand and speak a little more confidently on camera. Onwards!!
I’ve kept my eye on this company for a while... totally sold! When is it coming to the UK?! Don’t like saying the phrase but I’d say battery swapping such as this is “game changing!”.
Each replacement needs a service technician to be free and you have to wait in line, if it scales up they need more technicians and queues will only get bigger
@@mofojohnson1 NIO just debuted second generation swap station, which requires no staff and contains more spare batteries (13). The car will drive itself into and out of the station.
Great review. I do like how every time Elliot gives a price conversion from RMB to pounds in these videos a little on screen popup appears with a completely different conversion figure. Shows how unstable currency conversions are! I also think the vans that will go out to charge your car up if you get stuck somewhere without a working charger or battery swap station is a great idea.
We have those vans in Italy! The price of the charge is quite high, though, and they only charge you up 30kWh, but they can operate on any EV and you don't even have to be there, so it's good to have the option!
@@FabriSlv Yes you can call them on the App, and they will work with any EV car, obviously it's more expensive but NIO has discounts for their customers.
This falls into the "even if it was so, I still wouldn't believe it" category. How many fully-charged battery packs does each station have to keep on-hand, for _how_ many different pack configurations? How do the fluid cooling loops that are _integral_ with the packs get disconnected/reconnected properly? What driver would acquiesce to having their pampered battery replaced with one that might well have been abused? What about the chance that a megagram assembly designed for quick disconnect might, well, _disconnect_ spontaneously?
I imagine that the battery connectors would wear out after a while. I guess the machine that swaps the battery would be monitoring the condition of the connector and advise that it needs replacing at a dealer.
@@B0LL0CK5 The connector for a 15kw plug isn't made from tinned copper like the battery connectors. Your plug is most likely made from bronze which has a stronger resistance to wearing out. They do wear out eventually at around 150k connections.
1 hr for 80%, but how long for that 100% you get in the swap? Not to mention the batteries can be conditioned and tested every swap to reduce degredation for fast charging.
Would the US let a Chinese company build this sort of station all over the country? They don't even like when other countries use Chinese companies to build cell network infrastructure.
I think the biggest problem with battery swapping was highlighted by Elliot himself when he said the "swapping facility" had no charged batteries available, so they had to wait an hour before being able to go there and still had to wait 5 mins because there's only one swapping stop per facility. Batteries are expensive to manifacture, the most expensive part of an EV actually, and to properly distribute them over a territory as large as a nation (if not the whole Europe, or China, or planet) you'd need at least 10x as many batteries as there are EVs... it can't be cheap, can it? With the distribution issue of batteries, and considering that you can do 500km with 64kWh on a Kona (which would be a 10 minute charge at 350kW) I'd say that by the time EVs become the standard it will still be faster overall to use fast DC charging than battery swapping, because you can have basically as many chargers as there are parking spots in places like motorway stations, event venues and standard gas stations - where fast charging is most needed and still will be in 10 years' time, when even small cars will easily have 80/120kWh batteries on board.
You'd just check your app and go to a different station, but yes, they would need to have enough change stations scattered about. But really it's just like every gas station in that not everyone needs to fill up the same day at the same time.
Didn't Tesla do this a few years ago (I believe it was about half the time also) but they decided it was an expensive and unnecessary way to recharge a battery?
They did, they even trialed some swapping stations I believe. It makes more sense for long road trips...so think stations on freeways, not in cities, you’re not going to run a battery dry around town.
@@piersdenney it doesn't make any sense. IF I am on a long trip, I would not mind stopping every 3 hours to recharge and take a break from driving/bathroom/snack time etc...while my car is charging for 20-30 min
No question that standardization is key to making exchangable batteries a reality. It has to be done across brands. All car builders need to agree on a standard and then the thing can go forward.
This would make sense 10+ years ago when the only charging technology was a 13amp domestic power outlet. But we now have 250+kw that can charge at 1,000mph and take most cars from 20% to 80% in 20 odd minutes. Do we need this? Particularly is you can turn up and still have to wait for your "replacement battery" to finish charging before it can be swapped in?
@@mofojohnson1 I don't think they will either, most impressive thing about nio is the battery swap which can be copied/stolen ,and if the charging capability continues to improve we won't need battery swap...car companies arnt stupid ..I work for a large car company and the electric cars are coming dont think these guys will rule the ev market
I like battery swapping, much faster very convenient, you dont have to wait hours to charge the car, very genius idea, why buy another car they are really thinking about the best for customer and the future. 🥰👍👍❤
@@pvvv888 our Government is not doing anything to encourage EVs. Perhaps they're scared they wouldn't get their cut if switched to electric. TBH, they are corrupt to the core.
They did it, the madmen! Actual, practical, automated battery swap technology. Not sure if has a big future with how low the charging times have become, but it's a great proof of concept and I'm sure there will be places where this is preferable to rapid charging.
"practical" No, because it results in 2-3 times the number of packs in circulation. What did Elon Musk just say? "We need more materials" It's a waste.
I have a few doubts: At 9:29 you explain how you had to go around town for 1 hour before you could get a fresh battery swap in 3 minutes. Did I understand this correctly? If yes, this does not sound good. Are batteries with this method always charged to 100%? This would not be good for the batteries. One of the limiting factors for scaling EV is battery production. How many extra batteries nedd to be produced per swapping station? Can NIO change battery format or are they stuck with the current form since with other formats the swapping station would not work? Is the cost of a swapping station lower than the cost of the amount of chargers needed to have the same output of cars? If no, then it would mean that with the same investment by NIO, customers would have to wait more in queue for the swap compared to the time of charge in a normal charging point.
Given all the problems with battery swap, I'm surprised someone actually bothered. 9:37 So the three minute battery swap took and hour and three minutes. Humm... Just use fast charging.
Or, if his battery was much much lower than it actually was in this video, he could be content with not waiting an hour and just getting a 80% (or whatever is available) charged battery instead of a full one. You don't have to wait for a full battery each time when there are enough stations to keep swapping as you go, assuming there's not a small limit to swaps per day.
He did this for demonstration purposes. Obviously you wouldn't need a full charge every single time. More importantly, its the long range highway stations that really count for battery swapping. Being on the highway, they'll probably be less frequented, and so have more and fuller batteries available more often, for the kinds of trips that really need them.
@@thomasscream4179 As it turns out, Highways is one of the big reason battery swapping wasn't being done. Like I said, "Given all the problems" and highways crank those problems up to 11.
Battery swap is a nice idea in theory but I still remain to be convinced it is viable in the medium to long term. It was tried and failed in Israel, Better Place, wasn't it? These stations must be very costly to build and then there's the ongoing staff costs. Got to be far cheaper to put in a bank of rapid chargers, reducing queuing compared to a battery swap station. Then there's the issue of owning your own battery pack, the most expensive part of the car. Can you get your original pack back or will it just circulate around the fleet? That would be fine if renting the battery but that model has died out, at least in the West. 350kW+ charging's not too far off of reality (perhaps already there according to some spec sheets). If you've been driving for 3-4 hours then a fifteen minute break isn't only no real sacrifice, it's a very good idea. Battery swap is only a thing because fossil fuel drivers think they need a three minute refuel. They don't.
Understand the concept but too many variables . Waiting an hour, possible next battery is duff, wear and tear on bolts, Misaligned screw threads etc. Lets concentrate on battery density and supercharging as the way forward.
Why would the battery be duff? One would assume some kind of testing should be possible. Clearly waiting an hour (even 20 minutes) is not really acceptable for this to be a benefit over charging. Indeed it could be that you arrive at the power centre and then think "Hey, I'll have lunch - I'll charge rather than swap"...
it's not about the variables but about options imo. you can still charge like a tesla. they can easily concentrate on battery density and supercharging. Nio comes up with a battery that gives you more range and durability? no problem go to the station and swap it in 3min +-.
It'd be impossible to get a bad battery as they are all managed by BMS while being charged so any bad battery would be flagged and removed from service. The problem is they take a while to charge so if the station is busy you might not get a 100% full battery, but if you had to pay, you'd only pay for the cost of the difference in charge between your battery and whatever one you got.
amazing I follow your show regularly.electric is the future and China is leading.i m sure big corporates whose business are affected by this new approach dont like your program and if possible they will do everything to intimidate you.dont listen to them.we ordinary customers like you.good luck
I think with time they have the tec to swap more batteries in a single station , the, nio is butting the Solutions for electric car owners and future buyers , really amazing
This also has the issue : who owns the battery? "Better Place" solved this with "you own the car, you rent the battery". This was NOT something people thought much of. No, I think high speed charging will be the future.
@@terenceding1210 No, I do not ignore that. Most batteries last the lifetime of the cars, and very rarely needs replacing, also an EV has way less serviceable parts, service that ends up costing the same as a battery replace on a regular EV is not uncommon in gas cars. Battery ageing in "owned batteries" vs renting batteries, well the rental cost of batteries was so big, that you rather save the money and do a battery replace if neede with the money you save. I have driven EV for 6 years, I know a bit about cost and ageing.
@@terenceding1210 The Nissan Leaf had some astronomical costs to change a battery in Australia. $300 000? 🤔 That is counterproductive to the core idea of having EVs
Steinar Eliassen I thought the battery capacity declines over time, like our mobile phone, but I don’t own EV car, so I can’t confirm about that. Currently, every NIO owners in China are free to swap batteries over lifetime, so it is more attractive for potential buys than buying Tesla.
Another Wow from China....!!! Neo will send chills down Toyota & every other car maker's spine...Well done China. Indonesia is waiting for Neo's arrival.👍👍👍
This is a great solution for those who don´t have the time to wait 30-50 minutes at a ragular fast charger. 3 - 5 minutes for a battery swap is the same time as you need for refueling a combustion engine vehicle at the gas station. The system would be perfect if they made a drive-in station just like in a car wash driving inside frontal ( not backwards ), or like drive-in KFC / Mc Donald / Burger King, etc. That would reduce the risk of damaging your car and also damaging parts of the swapping station. They could use signal boards and a kind of trafiic-lights to tell you to move forward or to stop. Automation is the key to success ! A worker in such a swapping station does NOT cost much in China as they work for less wages there. A worker here in Germany would cost 9,35 Euro per hour ( minimum wage per hour by law ! ) Not sure if this concept would work in western Europe too. But i would prefer to buy a NIO electric car over other electric cars if they offered that battery swapping in Germany too.
2.5 metric tons!!! How can that ever be considered efficient or eco friendly? Madness! I would have thought with battery swapping you could use a far smaller battery 50KWh, it doesn’t matter if you have to swap it after 180 miles if it only takes 3 minutes.
That's very smart! Instead of recharging one battery is installed in the car, just have 2nd pack or 3rd pack batteries get charged at home and you can also keep the extra pack of batteries in your car and swap them out any time if it's not too heavy. Just like my RC cars or drone.
Amazing! I recall the Fiat Centoventi concept had something akin to this in its project plan. Here's hoping they do end up going through with that, because battery swapping could make EVs more viable for long range commuters too! (if hydrogen doesn't catch on )
To the luddites and naysayers- you do realize NIO customers use/love this feature and have done so over 650 THOUSAND times. It will take over. Pumping gas will be replaced by battery swaps; not by rapid charging or overnight charging. 3 minutes 100%. The inventory and station availability will improve/expand. This is the future.
in fairness, if you can... it will always be cheaper and better to have a domestic charger... like 1/2 the price... and the condition of the battery you are getting will always be a concern. I'm glad battery swapping exists, but no... it will not replace charging. Whenever I leave my house, my Ev's battery is full. that is total luxury... I understand in crowded cities people cannot get domestic charging, and this is a great solution for that, but honestly, building codes in North America are changing so that all residential parking is pre-wired for charging, and something similar should happen in China... so that eventually, it is easy for everyone.
Why though ? I use a charger away from home about every 6 months. The rest of the time the car is fully charged in the morning ready to go for the day. This is electric copying the petrol lifestyle. No need for most of us with home charging.
About 45 years ago I saw exactly this kind of technology in a children book about future energies and energy technology. Nobody in Europe was going this way even though it was public in this kids book. It took over 40 years to install this in Shanghai, hope all the Electrical car producers will find a way to uniform their battery technology to work together on a universal battery which would allow to build these stations usable for all cars ... Just a little comment in the kids book the battery was taken by a robot and pulled out to the side of the car which simplifies the manipulations, no lifting up needed and the car just stood aside the robot to exchange the battery ... These ideas were already in the heads of engineers way over 45 years ago - I still remember the book but could not find it back in my parents home ... The day I'll find the book again I will post that picture ... One thing is for sure this way is the only future possible for electrical cars - if we want to have autonomy like with fuel cars the network of these stations must be extended rapidly and this worldwide...
What a great idea. I always wondered if something like this was possible. It would be great if companies like CATEPILLAR etc. could design an electric forklift with swappable batteries so 24/7 factories with 5 to 10 forklifts so each electric forklift wouldn't need 2-3 hours of downtime a day for charging. Would help a multitude of companies reach net zero!
@@HansKeesom but you don’t need to return it. You keep the battery as long as you want. Swapping is a service, you don’t have to swap if you don’t want to.
@@youngscott9970 So who is responsible for the quality of the battery? If you own and it is end of life you don't have to buy a new one, you just swap it. When clever you do this at least once a year, although who garantees you get a good replacement battery? Personally I would see it like this, you pay for the car and get a loanbattery for free that you can interchange whenever you want.
I think this is a great concept. Yes, most would be happy using a super fast charger of say 350kw if available and getting a coffee for 15 minutes, but if not available or you’re in a real rush, this is another option. At least Nio are gonna make other ev manufacturers think about alternatives and maybe offer more choice which has got to be a good thing. Interior looks fantastic btw.
Yeah, but... he did say they had no batteries available, so they had to wait an hour before being able to go there, and still had to wait 5 mins because there's only one swapping stop per facility. Batteries are expensive to manifacture, the most expensive part of an EV actually, and to properly distribute them over a territory as large as a nation (if not the whole Europe) you'd need at least 10x as many batteries as there are EVs... it can't be cheap, can it? With the distribution issue of batteries, and considering that you can do 500km with 64kWh on a Kona (which would be a 10 minute charge at 350kW) I'd say that by the time EVs become the standard it will still be faster overall, because you can have basically as many chargers as there are parking spots in places like motorway stations, event venues and standard gas stations - where fast charging is most needed and still will be in 10 years' time.
@@Arag0n I'm not saying it's not a good option, I'm saying it's not easily scalable and applicable to all vehicles, and that it's not necessarily faster than fast charging. And I add, unfortunately, because battery swapping with gas stations converting to swapping facilities would be much better for the customer (no range anxiety, no trip planning required, just stop when you need and get a full battery), but it's just really hard to do "at the backend", and very polluting too.
@@FabriSlv given 1h charging and 3m swap, you hit a never ending supply at 20 batteries per swap spot. Assuming your typical gas station, only 4 swapping spots and 80 batteries max would be needed, in practice at most 25-40 as not all 4 spots would be continuously used. With a 30m fast charge battery, only 15-20 at most. That would be your ideal gas station replacement infrastructure for people that don't want to change habits. The biggest problem is that batteries are still expensive, making the swap station very expensive by extension as it needs to stockpile batteries.
@@Arag0n And that's exactly the point I'm making: you need to make extra batteries, tens of times more batteries than the EV circulating to be able to have a vaguely decent distribution, plus lots of space and lots of money for each swapping station - because the main point against AC charging is that it's very expensive, but you still need fast AC charging to be able to have the swap, so it doesn't solve the main "backend" problem of AC charging but introduces more....
The battery replacement takes place ***in the video** from 6:55 to 9:55. But with some cuts and editing in between (I noticed at least two where they cut the audio and restarted another). At 9:30, he admitted that he had to wait an hour for fresh battery to be available. :D
I'd prefer this, but in something like a Honda E. The 100mile is range would be enough for a week, but being in England not great for an occasional long trip. A three minutes battery swap for 100mile of range? I could get to London easily for a weekend away.
Tesla did have battery swap for the Model S a few years back but owners did not use it so the project was abandoned. Perhaps the Chinese feel differently.
So because you had to wait an hour until there was a charged battery, and then needed to wait 3 minutes behind someone else there is no advantage at all?
The problem with the Swapping "technology" is that every swapping station has 3 employees working full time. The maximum possible swaps per dag is 70 based on two correlated assumptions: the level of stock (5 batteries) and the charging time, which Nio is overestimating, but who doesn't. So after all, IF and only IF, there is a steady demand, also in the middle of the night, and the swapping station is able to change 70 batteries a day. Cash flow from 70 swaps is estimated to be $20 times 70 swaps = $1400. Taking into account the all the cost associated with this setup is fixed, I would consider this operation to be leverage in terms of profitability. I do have to point out that I do not have any clue about how much Nio is paying for the ground that they are using for these swapping stations. is it state-sponsored? is it based on a licensing contract, I do not know? please leave a comment if you got any insight knowledge :)
@Mr Yusuf It would be nice to see the first quality Chinese EV sold in the US but there is going to be many loops and hoops to go through before that can happen with national security issues with China..
LIKE if you think Battery Swapping could be the future and SHARE if you want more people to know about its potential. Full description below...
How would you feel about an electric car which you could charge from 0-100% in 3 minutes at a cost of around £8? Sounds too good to be true? Let us introduce you to the NIO ES8.
This SUV might be big, but it's also agile, and while its price tag reflects the refined design and impressive range, what's really interesting is the battery swapping service offered to all new NIO customers, as standard. In this episode Elliot takes the ES8 out for a drive and shows the 3-minute Battery Swap Station in action. For easy reference, please use the *Timestamps* below...
If you enjoyed this, check out Elliots report from the Chengdu Motor Show earlier this week - www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCNjD...
And for more on why we are covering what is going on in East Asia, and more specifically in China, please read our latest blog: 'Cancel Culture & Chinese Cars' - fullycharged.show/blog/cancel...
Fully Charged is 100% independent thanks to RUclips Memberships (join above) and Patreons (join via www.patreon.com/FullyChargedShow).
Online News, Views & Reviews: fullycharged.show
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*Timestamps*
0:00 Introduction to NIO & Battery Swapping
0:51 NIO - Blue Sky Coming
1:39 NIO ES8 price & statistics
2:55 Nice Action!
3:05 Boot/Trunk Size & 7-seats
3:26 Luxurious Interior, Innovative Instrumentation
4:32 First Drive Impressions
6:17 Battery Swap Station in action
6:50 Battery Swap Starts
7:00 Explanation of Battery Swap
8:03 Cost of Battery Swap
9:50 Battery Swap Finishes
10:02 NIO Power Remote Charging
11:01 Summary on NIO, ES8, Battery Swap etc
11:30 If you liked this, then you'll love these...
12:00 Subscribe & Support
The swap did not take 3 minutes. You had to drive for an hour until one was full! One hour 3 minutes. Stop fake news.
It's enormously expensive to develop the system of battery swapping stations and buying the extra batteries - Does anyone remember 'Better Place' inc? 10 years ago- an American/Israeli battery swapping company who worked with Renault and implemented this system ago in Denmark, Israel, and Australia. Sadly, they ran out of money. I remember them raising over $220Million in one round of capital investment - they may have raised even more in total!
What's going to be different with NIO ?
1) They build their own cars, and perhaps aren't reliant on another car company joining them in the battery swapping scheme. (Better Place was really hoping Toyota would join Renault/Nissan)
2) They will be financed by Chinese banks & the government with cheap loans (illegal in the Europe & US) with effectively unlimited funds.
Good luck to them. It's a great idea and it's been around since the dawn of EVs.
Did you know, or have you forgotten, that this was tried in Denmark (Israel and elsewhere) some years ago, under the aegis of the Better Place network? The car involved was the Renault Fluence Z.E., and the batteries for used vehicles are still available for rental from Renault dealers. While the NIO concept may fare better than Shai Agassi's concept, viewers may not consider the Chinese concept as so advanced and interesting, compared with Tesla's widespread charging networks.
@@mtnvalley9298 Couldn't agree more!
People are not in the mood for China taking over the world right now.
Who else is here, to see what exactly they're investing in?
indeed LOL and I love it so far!
bruh
You know, you’ll likely lose less money when you educate yourself BEFORE you put your cash into the ether lol
And NIU too....
LOL
Such an innovative and well-built SUV, I'll order one when they're available in EU. Love it
nio will come to eu in 2021。
boy ive got big news for you :D
how is europe with infrastructure to build battery swap stations? it looks difficult to scale since especially with other EV in the market that dont have this feature. it maybe unwise to build a charging station that only can accommodate 1 brand of EV vs all EV. imo battery swap is a must for people to fully adopt the concept of an EV
@@lalalamooone In short: Shitty. Long answer: Where I live (in Austria for reference) the necessary EV infrastructure isn't really given. Yea, we've got (quite a lot of) "public" charging stations, but for example only 19 Tesla Superchargers, whereas Norway got around 848. Electricity is fairly expensive compared to Norway, 16 cents there and 32 cents here (according to tesla average), so you'd pay double for a full charge here. I also think that building Battery Swap Stations would be incredibly difficult here, not only because of regulations but because the people wouldn't support it I guess. BaaS is far, far away here, and the whole EV thing is different from country to country. But- and i want to clarify that - EVs are getting more and more popular every year, so we are going in the right direction.
They will never pass the ADAC crash test..... or will not be allowed to pass...
That is what happens when you underestimate the competition. They move forward living you behind. Happened before with the Japanese in the 70s and 80s. History repeats itself.
Great video. We just passed the national standard of Swapping Battery, GB/T《电动汽车换电安全要求》. Type-I: 1500 swaps for personal cars, Type-II: 3000 times, and Type-III: 5000 for commercial vehicles. Life spam min. 1500 for bolt-type, 5000 for snap-type in 8-10 years, up to 600k km.
Nice video and thank you Elliot for putting all the efforts. The battery swap is a tech which suitable for a mega city like Shanghai because not everyone in Shanghai owns a parking lot. This is a great idea to encourage people to try and buy EVs. Some of the comments are too negative and please be open minded.
Battery swapping is actually impressive.
Why? 😩😷
@@AwesomeBlackDude think about the engineering
@A N Other in my opinion it's as practical as 150kw DC charging
Primarily because it is Black Box. That's all we need. To get away from the evil that both internal combustion and the fossil fuel industry's best friends electrification represent.
KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid! Simply drill a deep hole into the desert or seabed, suck out the dinosaur juice, blast it with energy to filter out the crap, put it on a boat, ship it around the world, squirt it into lorries, drive the lorry to a forecourt, fill up a big subterranean bath with it, put a pump on top - Bob's your uncle! What could be simpler?!
Very impressive tech and a great car. Well done Fully Charged & good job Elliot⚡
BAAS - battery as a service is now a China national infrastructure strategy. and Nio has already set the standard.
China and Arabia will be developing technology like we used to do and it's been reported in the New York Times even that the uranium in the ocean can replace the Black Gold. I have nominated freely available nitrogen as the energy carrier for the rest of this Millennia and Beyond. You take the uranium from where you can get it or wherever you get your good energy and you converted into liquefied gas like nitrogen. That boy was using again I know that people see the word free and they don't trust but the air around us is currently not expensive to use and there is no tax on using it. Same goes for the ocean water. Rightly or wrongly anybody that can get the water into their building can take all the uranium from it they want without paying anybody. You can also use the rhenium appropriately that means you don't waste it on electricity which is very expensive to produce and rather useless for everything that matters but almost all of our energy is actually used for hello?
So electricity is good for simulating. But it's time for us to get serious and immediately replace the burning of all fossil fuels. You do that by boiling nitrogen instead. you can fill up a car faster than you can change the battery and it also has far more power then stupid expensive electric motors with Russ belts all over the world having the buildings the tooling and the unemployed eager to work making turbines to do mechanical work without any negative externalities from all kinds of clean renewable energy sources turned into the commodity of energy itself as exemplified by liquefied nitrogen.
Irene How do you get energy out of liquid nitrogen? You need to input energy to liquify and to boil it.
@@Irene-fu6gj Has this been written by an AI? This is complete bullshit! Please take your pills again.
@@Dirk_Taggesell YES NYT NEWTON ETC ALL fake news right Bud? Just because your ignorant your not allowed to deny truth by feeble character attacking. Which fact is outside comfort zone Kevin?
@Ian Reid clicking on your profile Mister Reid it shows the beginning of what was the lamest comment in this entire collection where you said that it was not a 3-minute process hello when you go to the haircut place and you have to make an appointment for like tomorrow you call that a 24-hour long haircut?
This is a no brainer and something I've been saying for a decade! I'm in the US. Unless you're going to build a charging network with enough stations and capacity (charging stations are often full), you need to be able to swap batteries. This is just good engineering. Wish I know about Nio last year when the stock was low (my buddy did, though he didn't even know what they made).
Really cool to see this. Great move by the channel to start this coverage!
It's all about economy of scale, the larger the scale, the more convenient it will be. some viewers complained that different EV makers needs different swap stations, but it's not inconceivable for EV makers to form into an battery alliance, that will narrow the need for different system dramatically,
Even if they don't, so what, these are pretty small, and you can fit a dozen different brands of battery swap stations into a parking lot.
One way to move forward is to automate the entire process, making it easy enough for the owners themselves to drive it into place and press a button to swap the battery.
EVs will be more and more like a consumer product, the idea of having a yearly subscription for battery swap services and not actually own the battery is the way to go.
Even if EV makers don't form a battery swap alliance, it is conceivable that the likes of VAG, who own VW, Audi, Porsche, Seat, Skoda plus trucks and exotics could create a universal standard for their range. For example they could create a battery cell of nominal size 1. A Seat Ibiza could fit 3 cells in line under the floor, a Passat could fit 5 and a Scania could fit 10 stacked like pancakes.
it's just a game of capital, they play the old trick of start ups that burn cash at an unsustainable rate to capture market share and then either go flop or start charging the users
On a bigger scale when a lot if people have electric cars, I think this is not durable. I think that in the next decades they will mainly focus on charging the battery faster. But I like the concept and it definitely has potential.
The cars could be sold without batteries and you just swap out batteries on a regular basis. The older batteries could then be used for home power banks and cars can be refitted with new batteries as technology improves.
@@davidlazarus67 which might well be appealing, given much of the cost of an EV is batteries.
This shows that having access tp a large unified domestic market enables you to make cool products. India is also busy with electric cars now. It's time that the West stops staring at what Tesla is doing and makes it easier to start develop new electric powered products (especially Europe). Great video!
"The West" was "staring at Tesla" because without them, there would be zero EV's in "the West"
@@rogerstarkey5390 True, but the established car companies had 8 years to come up with a decent answer to Tesla. But as this video and other videos from fully charged shows, the best answers are coming from China and even surpassing Tesla.
India 😂🤣
@@dr.andersonsghost4315 Actually India produces a lot of vehicles. Brands like Maruti, Tata and Mahindra are manufacturing EV or will soon. Let's not forget that India also has a huge domesticl market. Also Indian brands have been exporting vehicles for quite a number of years now, wether under their own brand name or as OEM.
@@richardnedbalek1968 I guess it's by far the Tesla 3. Which shows that the traditional car companies are lagging behind. Besides that, which other car company, besides Tesla, can compete with the onslaught of the Chinese? We are talking about huge traditional cars companies here who, although they have some EV models, don't have anything which can compete with even start ups from 5 years ago.
Could you do another video on the car itself? The main reason, I'm aware, was to demonstrate the battery swapping, but I'm sure a lot of people like myself would be interested in the rest of the car. How much space is in the rear seats as an example, how much luggage space is there with all seats folded? Etc.
Agreed, more on the car would be great.
I thought the same; "fold the back row seats down and you get more room..." - right, but no view shown of this at all, or the middle-row or front passenger seat area either (and the bit with hand going under the middle console is lost out of frame). More thought on camera angles and internal views would be appreciated! But otherwise an interesting video on the battery swap-out feature. Like others have noted, not sure it is a hugely scalable approach, but has interesting capabilities for battery tech upgrades (solid state/glass, whatever the future holds).
Yep, I was just about to say the same.
Try looking on China Driver channel - Not sure if it has the answers to your questions
just like he said in the beginning of the video, he already review this car on his own channel, i believe it's called "China Driver"
It's great if this was available in the west most people would buy straight away,
I think.
This is really cool for quick refills. Thanks for sharing! It's a nice looking vehicle.
Questions?
1: How long are the OEM batteries warrantied to the original owner/
2: When you swap batteries does your OEM battery warranty transfer to your car in case the replaced charged battery is somehow defective?
John
I'd think in this model all the batteries are owned by NIO, and if you get a defective battery during a swap, they'll just swap it for another one. Just think of the battery as part of the ongoing service, not as part of the product.
I think that's the same kind of deal than when you rent the battery with the Renault Zoe. The battery is still owned by the OEM so they deal with the warranty and replace if it is defective.
@@Findalfen Surely they must have a certain period of time before they say that they won't support these model vehicles anymore?
Like, I wouldn't expect them to support this specific model Nio with battery swapping in say 10 or 15 years time. Unless, they keep the exact same battery housing and screw holes across every model in the future, or somehow develop "adaptors" for older models that are installed during a battery swap. But I don't think that is practical or economical.
@@brad5880 so after 10 years, buying new car will be more economical?
I'm sure they also have battery pack/individual cell health monitoring systems in place that will allow for pack repairs in house and ensure a long service life for the owner of the battery, Nio. Doubt they have engineered in planned obsolescence for something they own.
Nio is a solid company with great cars. My neighbour and his wife both have one each. By the way their cars are so many on the roads I'm sure they're going to get even bigger. They also have a formula E team if I'm not mistaken.
nice to hear, what city do you live in?
@@obsidianstatue My home is in Qinzhou. But at the moment I'm living in Nanning.
@sask1930 well, honestly many car startups are always on the verge of bankruptcy. But with the boom of EVs in China plus the subsidies they're getting I think they'll be ok for a while.
@sask1930 It should be pointed out that Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy for many years before their finances stabilise and they started producing profitable quarters.
@sask1930 NO This is Not Faraday Future.
This idea has been around for 20+ years. Nice to see someone actually using it.
any source of information?
The propane tank model!
Who here has NIO stock?
me
Me
Me
I got in back in March.
I put £100 on NIO a few months back and totally forgot about it (as it's in my non-isa account which I don't look at) I checked the other day and saw it was up to £380!
Great Idea put into action, these SUVs are efficient - put 7 people in it and it works well as a people mover for larger families. Love the Battery swap system.
keep going NIO.
I just bought new batteries for my impact gun, like new again. Swapping is the way to go!
I love Nomi. It is very cute and friendly. The manner is so relaxing and smart as well. 😍
The hats she wears are the best
@@onetwothreefour-s1n yes. Exactly. In a long way of travel Nomi will efficient help a driver. 🥰
A "NIO" Generation Is Coming⚡⚡
What an amazing set up ! This is the kind of change we need here in the UK to actually make the EV revolution happen. That and cost, again China beats us there too. It's not as if the quality is poor, that model is high spec and looks amazing for so much less than what we pay for half as plush products over here, it's a shame that in the past the UK has lead change and development yet with EV and the infrastructure the UK is so far behind.
I'm also concerned about how this works with cold climate. How would you get snow and salt off bottom to safely take out and replace?
Works fine. BetterPlace ran the concept in Denmark for some years, and we had plenty of slow, salt, etc.
It doesn't work for a different reason; it requires the batteries to be fairly similar, so it'll typically only be viable on a few brands and a few models/sizes.
And it requires more batteries to be manufactored. Every EV still need a battery in it, but with this there's also a need for extra batteries that can sit on the shelf.
The limiting factor in EV production is battery production, so having to make e.g. 10% extra for the same fleet of vehicles is a bit pointless.
@@Nicoleise it reminds me of the fact that some cars have different adapters to charge, what can't they all be the same? Tesla has faster charge, Total different charging stations. I'm jealous because Tesla has a charger at my local grocery store, but none for us regular guys. I know, Tesla put them in, not the store, but it's so convenient.
@@Nicoleise However with an infrastructure of battery swap, cheaper batteries(no lithium required) with shorter range can be produced.
@@Nicoleise If only car manufacturers defined a new modular battery back standard which could be used on all vehicles. Smaller packs of say around 40kWh and larger cars could have perhaps 3, mid models could have 2 and small cars just the one. That way you could do your regular commute with just one which would cut down on the mass, and if you need to go log distance, plug in more to get you further. Ultimately though, as charging improves this concept of battery swapping is doomed anyway but it would offer some interesting benefits, not least easier recycling if everyone is using the same packs.
Interesting concept. Thanks for highlighting how other countries are working on their infrastructure
Great video! I couldn't help but smile about it. Very well put togheter
Fantastic stuff. I'm driving Tesla X in HK. Love it for many reasons. I remember Israel government together with Nissan were planning this swap concept in Israel some years ago. Never took off. Leave it to the Chinese with their 'can do' attitude. Wouldn't it be great if such battery pack can be swapped by any car brand, a modular build? Nah, never gonna happen.
But for the prof market e.g. buscompanies in HK, it's a superbe solution phasing out all them damn diesel buses and trucks within a few years. Government needs to step in to make that happen. Unfortunately our HK government won't consider that...
Great video! I've subscribed.
That was Project BetterPlace. It also launched in Australia and Denmark. Was a private initiative (not Israeli Govt) supported by Renault/Nissan.
Model X seems so large to be driving around HK! Nice work :)
@@ruaraidhmcdonald-walker9524 yeah I remember seeing better place at the 2011 Melbourne motor show along with the new at the time Nissan leaf and Mitsubishi phev concept. I was quite hopeful about EVs back then but our government has done nothing to help uptake in Australia and we have one of the lowest amounts of EVs in the developed world sadly.
We have been changing batteries in our electric forklifts for the last 30 years
I guess that the security/safety standards that have to be fulfilled in case of a crash are not the same which makes car battery swaping more complex
That’s just it! The idea isn’t new! It’s simple and genius! Especially when it’s all automated
And they're still not at 100%!?!?
....cool, and totally comparable to everyday car use....😑
@@EHCordes it's amazing with all the people who talk about 20 years into Tesla nonsense I have yet to see anybody pointing out the Tesla engineer's their batteries to do this as well. I understand that was a 'different' company THEN the current predatory world-destroying monster. But it had the same name and many of the same people behind it including the founder. The moral hazard of him collecting additional billions of dollars is not hypothetical. If you don't have that money corrupting he would probably --if you want to give him any credit whatsoever-- have shut Tesla down many many months ago.
Batteries!!!
One thing I would hope is electric vehicle manufactures keep a close eye on battery technology.
After 50 years of flying R/C models I was able to watch the evolution of electric powered R/C models.
It was truly amazing to watch how QUICKLY new technology changed and made the current technology (especially batteries) OBSOLETE.
This included but was not limited to just the batteries, but the speed controllers, and motors.
I still see this Electric Powered Vehicle business in its first stages of development.
So while battery swapping sounds GREAT, it will be interesting to see how the manufacturer is able to implement quick battery changes while battery technology is constantly changing and improving. i.e. last years battery technology was good but this years battery technology is even better and maybe even different. i.e. solid state batteries if and when they are developed.
It is fun watching this process and be interesting to see what the future brings.
John
I was wondering since the car probably has some self-steering and self-parking feature etc. Couldn't they programm the car to park itself inside the swap station so that there's no need for employees who do that for you?
They probably need the employee to manage all the complex machinery either way! Seems like a lot of programming for little gain! :)
With almost 1.4 billion people, they can spare as many people as they want... 🤣🤣🤣
@@Antipius well back in 2012 when "Better Place" first came out with an operational similar mechanism it was fully automated and driven in by the drivers.
I'm sure that will happen eventually.
[I'm not going to change the text of my offending words below but I want people who are coming to this comment after it was pointed out to me that I watch the video too quickly or something to know that I'm going to supplement my words in the second reply to the objection soon. Forgive me if I'm out of practice or have just so little practice being wrong. I was in the middle of the video just now watching it at normal speed when the streaming news about Tik Tok hit the fan so I have installed Tick Tock several weeks ago in case this happened that I wanted to go ahead and running at least once before they try to comply with the order and possibly lock me out. Anyways having done that I get the notification of the reply LOL that I've already replied to once but that pulled me back into this video and now I'm going to complete watching it word for word but the design of the video is extremely poor for low-resolution viewers so I'm not able to read the fine print that's on the screen.]
"Try actually watching the video folks. What are you guys doing when this subjects is covered in the video? He says that the car drives itself into the shed because there's too much expensive equipment in there to allow the owner of the car to do that deed."
AND there is no worry about battery aging!!! 😁
Battery ageing is far less of an issue now than it used to be with cars like the Leaf. But it does strike me that there seems to be no active cooling around the battery in this vehicle.
@@RWBHere of corse it's not an issue, I was joking! 😊 Also, cooling isn't an issue to, surely they fit a fast plug for the liquid cooling.
Battery aging is still a thing btw. They just dont care about it. Who's to say you wont get a 10yr old battery in your car that only actually does half the rated miles in 10 yrs time.
We all know about chinas quality control so they wont even care one bit lol.
@@hellopsp180 And also the batteries industry in China is pretty mature now, compare to many other places. Like their BYD and CTLE(I believe) are all great battery suppliers, not only for China's market, also for other companies.
Tesla v3 charges 200 miles in under 15 minutes
Excellent review. Looking forward to Nio coming this way
Tesla is the pioneer of the EV but this right here takes it to a different level. Glad to be a part of the NIO roller-coaster from it's IPO days to now. Definitely reaping the rewards now for be patient and knowing how far this company will go for years to come.
This is more like what it will take to make electric cars more mainstream. I posted a comment maybe as much as ten years ago on either RUclips, or a forum, I can't quite remember, saying what I thought it would take. I envisioned standardized battery modules, though there could be several sizes. You would drive into a box marked on a garage forecourt. This could be done by autopilot. On the dashboard you would see your current battery's level of charge and select a level of charge you wanted in increments. After authorizing a battery swap, the car would release internal bolts holding the battery in place(so no one could unbolt your battery from the outside and make off with it). A hatch would open under your car and a robot would undo captive bolts on the battery module to remove it. A replacement would then be fitted and the internal bolts would automatically lock. Your car's movement would be disabled during this exchange procedure. You would be billed for the extra charge. There would be a permanent smaller battery in each car to keep the car's services running. The battery modules could be charged using any source of electrical power, including intermittent renewables when available. The battery packs would need to be monitored for wear levels to ensure people were getting the range they were paying for. Tired packs might have a second life as stationary grid storage before being recycled. It seems we're finally part way there!
Good to see this in operation and the benefits/pitfalls. Good video Elliot
The logo reminds me of the good old Commodore logo ;-)
I actually did my dissertation on EVs and battery swapping was one suggestion from a survey respondent. All respondents were in the UK. If this technology was made available anywhere, EVs will surely be more widely accepted and would probably drive the prices lower.
Thank you Elliot! Very Informative and impressive! Hopefully Nio will bring this Technology to the US! I would definitely buy a NIO! I love the battery swap! The cars and suvs are beautiful!
Thanks for this video. We all need to see more of different approaches taken in ev development. No industry should stand still or close themselves off to new ideas.
I was frustrated with your demonstration of the boot space. After explaining how limited it was due to the extra seating, you then told us we just have to fold those seats down to get "much more". You did the fold down, put your arm out as to say 'ta-daaa', but the next camera shot was from inside the front seat. Wtf?
Still enjoyed it, thanks.
For those of you hating on battery swap. You do realize that battery swap works with charging stations NOT against it right? Owners can choose whichever method works best for them. Also, a open battery swap program is a great incentive for both new and used car buyers. You no longer needs to worry about batteries dying out. Because you can just swap it for free. Or at least it is cheaper to replace due to the mechanical construction. Guess which vehicle will be able to hold value in the long term? Tesla?
Wow , China is coming fast
I heard a lot about this car , So a German guy driving it in Shanghai saying that he looked for mistakes in this car but couldn’t find any
Elliot is English. Not German. Not that it matters.
fullychargedshow probably can’t understand that English accent...l
And his name is Frank.
@@fullychargedshow I think he was referring to another youtube video of a German man who drove NIO and was in an interview in China. "Saw a German guy driving it..."
@@fullychargedshow You're right. It doesn't matter. Almost 100,000 Chinese people have purchased this vehicle and their opinion should count just as much as any German or British person.
Really interesting technology, and about time too!
However, as an aside, when Fully Charged reviews a car there is a often a lot of stuff about the driver's area. I know this matters but could we also have a look at the luggage area too please. Open the boot, fold seats down, remove roller blind, and show us how much space there is, or isn't, in the back, please.
Many of us don't want to use a big car just to drive ourselves around alone, so knowing how well passengers fit, and how well luggage, Ikea Billy book cases, or washing machines might go in the back would be really helpful.
Thank you.
I like Elliot, seems to be a good choice as a correspondent for Fully Charged, just needs some liquid courage in his early days of presenting to look, stand and speak a little more confidently on camera. Onwards!!
I’ve kept my eye on this company for a while... totally sold! When is it coming to the UK?! Don’t like saying the phrase but I’d say battery swapping such as this is “game changing!”.
I geniunly think that NIO can hit 70-80$ per share in mid 2021.
@Nigel i realy love their battery swap service, going on road trip and not spending more than 8 minutes charging your EV
@Nigel i own 5000 shares and anticipate a 6 figure balance in my trading account in the very near future
I paid $6800 for 1000 shares of NIO and forgot it completely, now it's $31000, it's all in TFSA.
The most important thing is that the company keeps executing well and attention for details and customers, keep innovating with batteries.
@@Schen-0532 congrats now you are at 42000$ (over 30k in profit).
i love the idea of replacing battery to save the driver waiting time.
Each replacement needs a service technician to be free and you have to wait in line, if it scales up they need more technicians and queues will only get bigger
@@mofojohnson1 NIO just debuted second generation swap station, which requires no staff and contains more spare batteries (13). The car will drive itself into and out of the station.
Great review. I do like how every time Elliot gives a price conversion from RMB to pounds in these videos a little on screen popup appears with a completely different conversion figure. Shows how unstable currency conversions are!
I also think the vans that will go out to charge your car up if you get stuck somewhere without a working charger or battery swap station is a great idea.
We have those vans in Italy! The price of the charge is quite high, though, and they only charge you up 30kWh, but they can operate on any EV and you don't even have to be there, so it's good to have the option!
@@FabriSlv Yes you can call them on the App, and they will work with any EV car, obviously it's more expensive but NIO has discounts for their customers.
@@jwickerszh Oh, ok, thought those were only for NIO customers!
This falls into the "even if it was so, I still wouldn't believe it" category. How many fully-charged battery packs does each station have to keep on-hand, for _how_ many different pack configurations? How do the fluid cooling loops that are _integral_ with the packs get disconnected/reconnected properly? What driver would acquiesce to having their pampered battery replaced with one that might well have been abused? What about the chance that a megagram assembly designed for quick disconnect might, well, _disconnect_ spontaneously?
Such an amazing car nio really is going to be huge
I imagine that the battery connectors would wear out after a while. I guess the machine that swaps the battery would be monitoring the condition of the connector and advise that it needs replacing at a dealer.
I have an 15kw, 3 phase plug which is plugged in/unplugged every day - for 23 years. Never needed replacing.
@@B0LL0CK5 The connector for a 15kw plug isn't made from tinned copper like the battery connectors. Your plug is most likely made from bronze which has a stronger resistance to wearing out. They do wear out eventually at around 150k connections.
Really looking forward to this in The US, It Defiantly the future of EV's ,3 minutes compared to 1 hour charging is an eternity
1 hr for 80%, but how long for that 100% you get in the swap? Not to mention the batteries can be conditioned and tested every swap to reduce degredation for fast charging.
Would the US let a Chinese company build this sort of station all over the country? They don't even like when other countries use Chinese companies to build cell network infrastructure.
@@TheRealBFKelleher so true
US hates fair competiton
I think the biggest problem with battery swapping was highlighted by Elliot himself when he said the "swapping facility" had no charged batteries available, so they had to wait an hour before being able to go there and still had to wait 5 mins because there's only one swapping stop per facility.
Batteries are expensive to manifacture, the most expensive part of an EV actually, and to properly distribute them over a territory as large as a nation (if not the whole Europe, or China, or planet) you'd need at least 10x as many batteries as there are EVs... it can't be cheap, can it?
With the distribution issue of batteries, and considering that you can do 500km with 64kWh on a Kona (which would be a 10 minute charge at 350kW) I'd say that by the time EVs become the standard it will still be faster overall to use fast DC charging than battery swapping, because you can have basically as many chargers as there are parking spots in places like motorway stations, event venues and standard gas stations - where fast charging is most needed and still will be in 10 years' time, when even small cars will easily have 80/120kWh batteries on board.
As my lovely UK friends would say, and highly appropriate for this NIO review...simply 'brilliant!"
Excellent report.
It's not 2 minutes when you count the one hour wait until a charged battery was available.
You'd just check your app and go to a different station, but yes, they would need to have enough change stations scattered about. But really it's just like every gas station in that not everyone needs to fill up the same day at the same time.
My point exactly
You only need it after 360 miles driving. Who goes that far without being able to book into a suitably located swap station?
Why shouldn’t the car be able to reserve a spot? It knows when you need a swap and when you would arrive there.
Can u charge this with a plug too or only battery swap ?
Didn't Tesla do this a few years ago (I believe it was about half the time also) but they decided it was an expensive and unnecessary way to recharge a battery?
You are missing the point. This is a stop gap and assurance solution for people who might have this concern. It is not intended for the masses
They did, they even trialed some swapping stations I believe. It makes more sense for long road trips...so think stations on freeways, not in cities, you’re not going to run a battery dry around town.
@@piersdenney it doesn't make any sense. IF I am on a long trip, I would not mind stopping every 3 hours to recharge and take a break from driving/bathroom/snack time etc...while my car is charging for 20-30 min
This needs to come to the uk
God, I hope not !
No question that standardization is key to making exchangable batteries a reality. It has to be done across brands. All car builders need to agree on a standard and then the thing can go forward.
This would make sense 10+ years ago when the only charging technology was a 13amp domestic power outlet. But we now have 250+kw that can charge at 1,000mph and take most cars from 20% to 80% in 20 odd minutes. Do we need this? Particularly is you can turn up and still have to wait for your "replacement battery" to finish charging before it can be swapped in?
Correct
Thank you for doing the nio es8 it’s a very innovative vehicle and they’re growing fast soon to be in Germany/uk
How many battery swap stations are in UK/Germany? They are a long way off
@@mofojohnson1 I think there only in China atm
@@AI4PrezLaughs they'll never make it to the UK
@@mofojohnson1 I don't think they will either, most impressive thing about nio is the battery swap which can be copied/stolen ,and if the charging capability continues to improve we won't need battery swap...car companies arnt stupid ..I work for a large car company and the electric cars are coming dont think these guys will rule the ev market
I like battery swapping, much faster very convenient, you dont have to wait hours to charge the car, very genius idea, why buy another car they are really thinking about the best for customer and the future. 🥰👍👍❤
Hours for charge? what decade are u living in?
I live in India and I feel we're literally moving backward after I watched this video.
Do elaborate plz
@@MHyun-ze5jg I mean to say, India has nothing to show for when it comes to EVs.
@Mellio Kuang Lol
@@globetrotterbengaluru tata motors are coming up but nothing at this extent.
@@pvvv888 our Government is not doing anything to encourage EVs. Perhaps they're scared they wouldn't get their cut if switched to electric. TBH, they are corrupt to the core.
They did it, the madmen! Actual, practical, automated battery swap technology. Not sure if has a big future with how low the charging times have become, but it's a great proof of concept and I'm sure there will be places where this is preferable to rapid charging.
"practical"
No, because it results in 2-3 times the number of packs in circulation.
What did Elon Musk just say?
"We need more materials"
It's a waste.
I have a few doubts:
At 9:29 you explain how you had to go around town for 1 hour before you could get a fresh battery swap in 3 minutes. Did I understand this correctly? If yes, this does not sound good.
Are batteries with this method always charged to 100%? This would not be good for the batteries.
One of the limiting factors for scaling EV is battery production. How many extra batteries nedd to be produced per swapping station?
Can NIO change battery format or are they stuck with the current form since with other formats the swapping station would not work?
Is the cost of a swapping station lower than the cost of the amount of chargers needed to have the same output of cars? If no, then it would mean that with the same investment by NIO, customers would have to wait more in queue for the swap compared to the time of charge in a normal charging point.
Given all the problems with battery swap, I'm surprised someone actually bothered.
9:37 So the three minute battery swap took and hour and three minutes. Humm... Just use fast charging.
1 hour and six minutes. Had to wait for the car in front. Just saying.
Or, if his battery was much much lower than it actually was in this video, he could be content with not waiting an hour and just getting a 80% (or whatever is available) charged battery instead of a full one.
You don't have to wait for a full battery each time when there are enough stations to keep swapping as you go, assuming there's not a small limit to swaps per day.
He did this for demonstration purposes. Obviously you wouldn't need a full charge every single time. More importantly, its the long range highway stations that really count for battery swapping. Being on the highway, they'll probably be less frequented, and so have more and fuller batteries available more often, for the kinds of trips that really need them.
@@thomasscream4179 As it turns out, Highways is one of the big reason battery swapping wasn't being done. Like I said, "Given all the problems" and highways crank those problems up to 11.
@@lucidmoses I don't understand. What exactly about highways is not conducive to battery swaps?
Battery swap is a nice idea in theory but I still remain to be convinced it is viable in the medium to long term.
It was tried and failed in Israel, Better Place, wasn't it? These stations must be very costly to build and then there's the ongoing staff costs. Got to be far cheaper to put in a bank of rapid chargers, reducing queuing compared to a battery swap station.
Then there's the issue of owning your own battery pack, the most expensive part of the car. Can you get your original pack back or will it just circulate around the fleet? That would be fine if renting the battery but that model has died out, at least in the West.
350kW+ charging's not too far off of reality (perhaps already there according to some spec sheets). If you've been driving for 3-4 hours then a fifteen minute break isn't only no real sacrifice, it's a very good idea.
Battery swap is only a thing because fossil fuel drivers think they need a three minute refuel. They don't.
If I understood correctly, you can decide whether to charge or swap, it's up to you. My only fear is about those screws...
Understand the concept but too many variables . Waiting an hour, possible next battery is duff, wear and tear on bolts, Misaligned screw threads etc. Lets concentrate on battery density and supercharging as the way forward.
Yep, you are right, it will be great in 2000 ... not now
Why would the battery be duff? One would assume some kind of testing should be possible. Clearly waiting an hour (even 20 minutes) is not really acceptable for this to be a benefit over charging. Indeed it could be that you arrive at the power centre and then think "Hey, I'll have lunch - I'll charge rather than swap"...
it's not about the variables but about options imo. you can still charge like a tesla. they can easily concentrate on battery density and supercharging. Nio comes up with a battery that gives you more range and durability? no problem go to the station and swap it in 3min +-.
It'd be impossible to get a bad battery as they are all managed by BMS while being charged so any bad battery would be flagged and removed from service. The problem is they take a while to charge so if the station is busy you might not get a 100% full battery, but if you had to pay, you'd only pay for the cost of the difference in charge between your battery and whatever one you got.
There are also liquid cooled batteries, so not only mounting bolts and HV connectors, but fluid connections to worry about?
amazing
I follow your show regularly.electric is the future and China is leading.i m sure big corporates whose business are affected by this new approach dont like your program and if possible they will do everything to intimidate you.dont listen to them.we ordinary customers like you.good luck
I think with time they have the tec to swap more batteries in a single station , the, nio is butting the Solutions for electric car owners and future buyers , really amazing
This also has the issue : who owns the battery? "Better Place" solved this with "you own the car, you rent the battery". This was NOT something people thought much of. No, I think high speed charging will be the future.
Renting the battery is a no go. I don't rent my current fuel tank
Probably, however, you ignore the cost of battery aging. Check the cost of changing a battery set for Tesla model would be surprise you.
@@terenceding1210 No, I do not ignore that. Most batteries last the lifetime of the cars, and very rarely needs replacing, also an EV has way less serviceable parts, service that ends up costing the same as a battery replace on a regular EV is not uncommon in gas cars.
Battery ageing in "owned batteries" vs renting batteries, well the rental cost of batteries was so big, that you rather save the money and do a battery replace if neede with the money you save.
I have driven EV for 6 years, I know a bit about cost and ageing.
@@terenceding1210
The Nissan Leaf had some astronomical costs to change a battery in Australia. $300 000? 🤔
That is counterproductive to the core idea of having EVs
Steinar Eliassen I thought the battery capacity declines over time, like our mobile phone, but I don’t own EV car, so I can’t confirm about that. Currently, every NIO owners in China are free to swap batteries over lifetime, so it is more attractive for potential buys than buying Tesla.
Remember, you don't wait for YOUR battery to be charged. You get a fully charged battery and leave yours to be charged and reused.
and the chain system of batteries will make a battery in good condition..
not to think about aging
When can I buy one in the UK!?
in 30 years
Gotta get the permission from ur American daddy
No
@@casey2230 no
Another Wow from China....!!! Neo will send chills down Toyota & every other car maker's spine...Well done China. Indonesia is waiting for Neo's arrival.👍👍👍
Wow! battery swap.....coool! No more waiting for yours to charge...brilliant!
This is a great solution for those who don´t have the time to wait 30-50 minutes at a ragular fast charger.
3 - 5 minutes for a battery swap is the same time as you need for refueling a combustion engine vehicle at the gas station.
The system would be perfect if they made a drive-in station just like in a car wash driving inside frontal ( not backwards ), or like drive-in KFC / Mc Donald / Burger King, etc.
That would reduce the risk of damaging your car and also damaging parts of the swapping station. They could use signal boards and a kind of trafiic-lights to tell you to move forward or to stop. Automation is the key to success ! A worker in such a swapping station does NOT cost much in China as they work for less wages there.
A worker here in Germany would cost 9,35 Euro per hour ( minimum wage per hour by law ! ) Not sure if this concept would work in western Europe too.
But i would prefer to buy a NIO electric car over other electric cars if they offered that battery swapping in Germany too.
Also could mean less wear and tear on the batteries, which could be charged more slowly.
really good building quality and refinement interior. from what i see, it really is a tesla rival. i'm buying it if i have not got the tesla X
this is insane, the future is now!
2.5 metric tons!!! How can that ever be considered efficient or eco friendly? Madness! I would have thought with battery swapping you could use a far smaller battery 50KWh, it doesn’t matter if you have to swap it after 180 miles if it only takes 3 minutes.
That's very smart! Instead of recharging one battery is installed in the car, just have 2nd pack or 3rd pack batteries get charged at home and you can also keep the extra pack of batteries in your car and swap them out any time if it's not too heavy. Just like my RC cars or drone.
6:20 NIO battery swap station.
Amazing! I recall the Fiat Centoventi concept had something akin to this in its project plan. Here's hoping they do end up going through with that, because battery swapping could make EVs more viable for long range commuters too! (if hydrogen doesn't catch on )
To the luddites and naysayers- you do realize NIO customers use/love this feature and have done so over 650 THOUSAND times. It will take over. Pumping gas will be replaced by battery swaps; not by rapid charging or overnight charging. 3 minutes 100%. The inventory and station availability will improve/expand. This is the future.
in fairness, if you can... it will always be cheaper and better to have a domestic charger... like 1/2 the price... and the condition of the battery you are getting will always be a concern. I'm glad battery swapping exists, but no... it will not replace charging. Whenever I leave my house, my Ev's battery is full. that is total luxury... I understand in crowded cities people cannot get domestic charging, and this is a great solution for that, but honestly, building codes in North America are changing so that all residential parking is pre-wired for charging, and something similar should happen in China... so that eventually, it is easy for everyone.
@@petersilva037 Exactly! I was about to say the same....
Why though ? I use a charger away from home about every 6 months. The rest of the time the car is fully charged in the morning ready to go for the day.
This is electric copying the petrol lifestyle. No need for most of us with home charging.
About 45 years ago I saw exactly this kind of technology in a children book about future energies and energy technology. Nobody in Europe was going this way even though it was public in this kids book. It took over 40 years to install this in Shanghai, hope all the Electrical car producers will find a way to uniform their battery technology to work together on a universal battery which would allow to build these stations usable for all cars ... Just a little comment in the kids book the battery was taken by a robot and pulled out to the side of the car which simplifies the manipulations, no lifting up needed and the car just stood aside the robot to exchange the battery ... These ideas were already in the heads of engineers way over 45 years ago - I still remember the book but could not find it back in my parents home ... The day I'll find the book again I will post that picture ... One thing is for sure this way is the only future possible for electrical cars - if we want to have autonomy like with fuel cars the network of these stations must be extended rapidly and this worldwide...
What a great idea. I always wondered if something like this was possible. It would be great if companies like CATEPILLAR etc. could design an electric forklift with swappable batteries so 24/7 factories with 5 to 10 forklifts so each electric forklift wouldn't need 2-3 hours of downtime a day for charging. Would help a multitude of companies reach net zero!
Wow, very awesome :D I must keep an eye out for them. I'm sure I recognise that logo.
So basically if your battery has degraded you can raplace it for 10 quids.
Well it is not yours anyway.
@@HansKeesom it’s actually yours. You paid for a battery when you buy it.
@@youngscott9970 But they swapp it...... how can it be yours then?
@@HansKeesom but you don’t need to return it. You keep the battery as long as you want. Swapping is a service, you don’t have to swap if you don’t want to.
@@youngscott9970 So who is responsible for the quality of the battery?
If you own and it is end of life you don't have to buy a new one, you just swap it. When clever you do this at least once a year, although who garantees you get a good replacement battery?
Personally I would see it like this, you pay for the car and get a loanbattery for free that you can interchange whenever you want.
I think this is a great concept. Yes, most would be happy using a super fast charger of say 350kw if available and getting a coffee for 15 minutes, but if not available or you’re in a real rush, this is another option. At least Nio are gonna make other ev manufacturers think about alternatives and maybe offer more choice which has got to be a good thing. Interior looks fantastic btw.
Yeah, but... he did say they had no batteries available, so they had to wait an hour before being able to go there, and still had to wait 5 mins because there's only one swapping stop per facility.
Batteries are expensive to manifacture, the most expensive part of an EV actually, and to properly distribute them over a territory as large as a nation (if not the whole Europe) you'd need at least 10x as many batteries as there are EVs... it can't be cheap, can it?
With the distribution issue of batteries, and considering that you can do 500km with 64kWh on a Kona (which would be a 10 minute charge at 350kW) I'd say that by the time EVs become the standard it will still be faster overall, because you can have basically as many chargers as there are parking spots in places like motorway stations, event venues and standard gas stations - where fast charging is most needed and still will be in 10 years' time.
@@FabriSlv which means the station is heavily used, which implies customers like it
@@Arag0n I'm not saying it's not a good option, I'm saying it's not easily scalable and applicable to all vehicles, and that it's not necessarily faster than fast charging.
And I add, unfortunately, because battery swapping with gas stations converting to swapping facilities would be much better for the customer (no range anxiety, no trip planning required, just stop when you need and get a full battery), but it's just really hard to do "at the backend", and very polluting too.
@@FabriSlv given 1h charging and 3m swap, you hit a never ending supply at 20 batteries per swap spot. Assuming your typical gas station, only 4 swapping spots and 80 batteries max would be needed, in practice at most 25-40 as not all 4 spots would be continuously used.
With a 30m fast charge battery, only 15-20 at most. That would be your ideal gas station replacement infrastructure for people that don't want to change habits.
The biggest problem is that batteries are still expensive, making the swap station very expensive by extension as it needs to stockpile batteries.
@@Arag0n And that's exactly the point I'm making: you need to make extra batteries, tens of times more batteries than the EV circulating to be able to have a vaguely decent distribution, plus lots of space and lots of money for each swapping station - because the main point against AC charging is that it's very expensive, but you still need fast AC charging to be able to have the swap, so it doesn't solve the main "backend" problem of AC charging but introduces more....
The battery replacement takes place ***in the video** from 6:55 to 9:55. But with some cuts and editing in between (I noticed at least two where they cut the audio and restarted another). At 9:30, he admitted that he had to wait an hour for fresh battery to be available. :D
In case of moderate flood ? Will it be safe ?
Good for customers that live in apartments in cities with no home charge.
It's fast @3min but prefer car charging like tesla
People charge on parking lot in china, they only swab battery when going long trip
Both options are available.
Well, you can charge this car like any other EV, but it has a second option, to do this battery swap in 3min. So you have more choice. It is better.
I'd prefer this, but in something like a Honda E. The 100mile is range would be enough for a week, but being in England not great for an occasional long trip. A three minutes battery swap for 100mile of range? I could get to London easily for a weekend away.
@@DS-pk4eh Exactly !
GO NIO!!
This car blows Tesla out of the water, Tesla promised battery swapping, but couldn't deliver, these guys delivered.
Tesla did have battery swap for the Model S a few years back but owners did not use it so the project was abandoned. Perhaps the Chinese feel differently.
So because you had to wait an hour until there was a charged battery, and then needed to wait 3 minutes behind someone else there is no advantage at all?
Wow another fantastic vid very well done.
The problem with the Swapping "technology" is that every swapping station has 3 employees working full time. The maximum possible swaps per dag is 70 based on two correlated assumptions: the level of stock (5 batteries) and the charging time, which Nio is overestimating, but who doesn't. So after all, IF and only IF, there is a steady demand, also in the middle of the night, and the swapping station is able to change 70 batteries a day. Cash flow from 70 swaps is estimated to be $20 times 70 swaps = $1400. Taking into account the all the cost associated with this setup is fixed, I would consider this operation to be leverage in terms of profitability. I do have to point out that I do not have any clue about how much Nio is paying for the ground that they are using for these swapping stations. is it state-sponsored? is it based on a licensing contract, I do not know? please leave a comment if you got any insight knowledge :)
Don't you think it can be fully automated at the station soon?
Sounds like a western capitalist pig mentality problem to me. Don't think Nio and China are worried at all about any of that ...
Nio, Best EV in the world! 🥰🥰🥰
Nio is the deal when you're talking about investing in stock market. Im in for te long run!
I'm in and believe on the long journey
Been in NIO stock since it was around $3.60 😎
@Mr Yusuf It would be nice to see the first quality Chinese EV sold in the US but there is going to be many loops and hoops to go through before that can happen with national security issues with China..
@@MiguelRodriguez-nt5eq so you have only been in the stock since 2020. Lmao, probably have only $1,000 invested.
This is awesome . Battery swapping, what a concept. Very forward looking