Does anyone think battery swap-out is useful or even needed for electric vehicles? 11

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1. 

   Craig Allen Posted 1:23 pm
   03 Feb 2009

   I think your are all being too negative.The better Place cars will be significantly cheaper that hybrid cars, because you don't have the internal combustion engine and you don't have to buy the battery up front.
   As battery technology improves, your battery automatically gets upgraded.
   As your battery's performance degrades with use over time, you will not be lumbered with a dud battery.
   Apparently it will take less time to have your battery swapped than it currently takes to fill up with petro-juice.
   Most of the time you will charge your car directlyat home or work and will not need to switch batteries.
   BetterPlace have hinted that you may be able to choose a premium plan that ensures you always get a top notch battery, or a budget plan that lets you save money by making do with the worse performing but none-the-less adequate for your needs batteries available at the exchange stations. You will even be able to up you plan for a specific long distance trip so that you get a better battery and get a double pack installed for that specific ride.
   It all hinges on whether BetterPlace can make it work financially. If so - and they claim they can - then why winge about it?
   Much of the time I would only need to do short trips. But about once a week or fortnight I need to do longer trips of 150 to 400 km. The BetterPlace system would be perfectly for me. I suspect that the same is true for many other people. Even if people only need the longer trips once a month or several times a year, I suspect that having that capability would make a big difference to people's decision whether or not to go electric.

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2. 

   ssn139 Posted 1:44 pm
   03 Feb 2009

   Over-emphasizing Battery Change StationsI liked the points you brought up, but I think that you are over-emphasizing the importance of battery change stations in Better Place's (or any other EV company's) model, at least in small, isolated places like Israel or Hawaii. The Better Place website estimates that its car will be able to go 100 miles on a charge.  Lets say that its really 90 miles on average, given that some batteries will be weaker.  As the Post article pointed out, that would be more than enough range for most driving. Thus, the user wouldn't go near a charge station during normal use.
   In Israel, the furthest straight-shot drive you'd probably take would be about 170 miles (from the northern most part of the country to the beginning of the nearly uninhabited Negev desert. That's one change. Round trip on the biggest of Hawaii's Island (though it only has about 1/10th the population) is 220 miles (two changes). You can get around the most populous island in just about one charge (90 miles). Not to mention that Better Place is planning to put up charge stations up in public places so you can charge the car while you visit your grandmother (or whoever) before returning home.
   When you move to a much larger place, I think the complaints about the battery stations become much more important. Unlike Israel and Hawaii, I don't think the U.S. government or other 49 states should give Better Place much help until they show they can do large areas effectively, like in Australia. Our infrastructure money will be better spent on trains and mass transit. As for the space required for battery change stations, most long trips are going to take you away from cities and towns, and there's still plenty of unused room around all of these sorts of gas stations I've visited.
   Some other larger problems facing Better Place (and EVs in general) is the low cost of gas (at least in the United States) and lithium supplies, which I've written about here
   
   The Finite World. A resources and energy blog.

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3. 

   amazingdrx Posted 2:10 pm
   03 Feb 2009

   Battery exchangeThis would be ok for buses, garbage trucks, taxis, delivery vehicles, forklifts, construction equipment, work vehicles owned by the same company that would own the battery exchange system and all the batteries.
   This is an advantage for vehicles like taxis and buses where hours of down time to recharge would dent the profit picture.
   Will 10 minute charge nano tech batteries be mass produced at reasonable prices before the wider roll out of electric vehicles?  Maybe so, but don't bet on lithium batteries, they are too expensive.
   For a 20 to 40 mile plugin range for a plugin hybrid, battery weight and charge time will not be a premium consideration worth paying for.  That's why the "... power plant in our trunks," is a good idea.  It solves the battery cost, weight, dead-on-the-side-of-the-road limited range, and charge time problems.
   A movie star or CEO can call a tow truck and a free limo when his Tesla Roadster runs out of battery charge, regular consumers can not.
   
   http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

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4. 

   amazingdrx Posted 2:14 pm
   03 Feb 2009

   ForgotSince the average trip between charging opportunites is only around 23 miles, even a 25 mile average plugin range will save over 80% of fuel use.
   
   http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

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5. 

   GreyFlcn Posted 3:54 pm
   03 Feb 2009

   More to the pointWhen this is possible, why would you need swapping?
   
   http://greyfalcon.net/quickcharge3.png
   
   http://greyfalcon.net/quickcharge
   And if you're worried about lack of charging infrastructure, well then aren't Serial Plugin Hybrids a better model? Atleast for the shorter term.
   
   -David Ahlport

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6. 

   Delay And Deny Posted 4:47 pm
   03 Feb 2009

   Someone stop the madness
   
   Can someone stop the madness.
   Batteries can't work.
   It takes 8 hours to charge them.
   They weight hundreds of pounds whether fully charged or empty.
   Hydrogen is the best storage medium for transportation.
   
   Obama The Vapor President ?!?

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7. 

   Pangolin Posted 7:56 pm
   03 Feb 2009

   Push the worst solutionSo many other options to battery swap exist that it's just a silly proposal. The obvious solution to this non-problem is to offer plug-in hybrid and BEV versions of the same car. You could rent a plug-in for long trips.
   Even better than swapping the car is swapping a generator. A technician could drop in a Honda generator that slides in on rails, attach two quick connects for power/control and gas, and fill the gas tank. That makes the most complicated and failure prone part of the car a rental. The BEV wouldn't miss the weight on normal driving days.
   A generator would even weigh less than a battery swap as it would only need to produce power to maintain level highway speed. That's about one-quarter the power your car's engine can produce.
   Of course the Tesla prototypes drove around with a special motor/generator trailer that also had expanded trunk space. The trailer was rigged so that it tracked exactly as if it was just a longer car.
   Finally several in-road induction systems capable of providing vehicle power at highway speeds have been proven on test tracks. This is a variation on the technology that powers your toothbrush and presents no technical challenges.
   Swapping a 400-500 lb battery every three hours sounds like the worst solution. Other than being a great plan for creating a monopoly service it stinks.
   
   Put the Carbon Back

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8. 

   spaceshaper Posted 9:17 pm
   03 Feb 2009

   An all-electric carwill be a different kind of car.
   We will use it in different kinds of ways.
   The range of ICE vehicles will be hard to emulate, period. We probably won't ever use BEV's for long-distance trips. NBD. The one-vehicle-suits-all-purposes era will gradually end. We'll rent, as many do now, for those occasional range-busters. A manufacturer that cramps its design team with hot-swappable battery bays will lock itself into soon-outdated battery formats and be swiftly outclassed by its smarter competitors.
   New technologies always start out trying to reproduce the outward characteristics of the old and end up establishing a new paradigm. There should be no public money invested in this dumb idea.
   
   The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

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9. 

   Whiskerfish Posted 11:04 pm
   03 Feb 2009

   How about a car that does 400km on batts alone?I've just seen a prototype 6-seater family car a couple miles down the road from me that can get 400km between charges, and another 30km from the rooftop solar PV on sunny days... they claim a 20 min fast charge, 8 hours for normal charge. I'll be in full production in 2011.
   I figure if you're doing a cross-country the furthest you're likely to do in a day is about a thousand miles. You are not going to do this very often so the odd bit of damage the odd fast charge does is not going to bother you too much. You should be resting every two hours to keep your driver alertness up anyway.
   That said, the company that I spoke to is in discussion with BetterPlace...
   Cheers
   Whiskerfish in Cape Town

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10. 

    Whiskerfish Posted 11:07 pm
    03 Feb 2009

    minor correction on the aboveIt'll be -- not I'll be -- in full production in 2011...

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11. 

    amazingdrx Posted 12:56 am
    04 Feb 2009

    Yeah PangI like that solution, a BEV where the battery pack is split in two, one half permanent and one half removable and replaceable with a backup generator.  Dealers could swap the generator in for a trip then swap the battery back in and the generator out again to return to daily local driving.
    That way daily driving range could be adjusted, even if you have a one way trip to work that is 60 miles, if you could plug in at work, no problem.  Since the average daily trip is around 23 miles a pure battery electric vehicle like this, that converts to a plugin for trips, would cover over 90% of driving with bateries alone.
    I would have the generator in use as backup for my home until I needed it for a trip.  Honda has multi-fuel generators that run on natural gas (biogas you can make yourself), LP gas, or gasoline.  This would backup home power from a home biogas digestor running on waste biomass.
    A 15 kw generator suitable for an ultralight electric car could power a whole neighborhood with emergency power in a storm outage situation through a local smart grid.  If every 10th building had a suitably sized generator running on biogas/natural gas, the grid would be almost invulnerable to long term outage.
    With every 4th building powered by solar cogeneration solar could take over from the emergency generators as soon as the sun shines again.  BEV batteries could store power for the grid too.  This would really help avoid overuse of backup generators.
    What would a grid like that be worth in terms of economic activity saved?  Look at the ice storm that put normal business activity on hold for at least three weeks most recently.
    
    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

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