Fiat 500e EVs Will Begin Battery Swap Testing In 2024 (theverge.com) 90
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Stellantis struck a deal with California-based EV battery swapping company Ample to power a fleet of shared Fiat 500e vehicles in Spain. But the company says the deal could eventually expand to include personally owned EVs in Europe and the US as well. By becoming one of the first Western automakers to embrace battery swapping technology, Stellantis is betting that EV charging infrastructure in Europe and the US will remain a barrier to adoption in the near future, necessitating other solutions. Battery swapping could theoretically help EV owners power up and get moving without having to wait for long stretches at a charging station.
Stellantis will work with Ample to launch a battery swapping system for a fleet of Fiat 500e vehicles as part of a car-sharing service through its Free2move subsidiary. The service will first appear in Madrid in 2024, where the Fiat 500e is already available. (The tiny EV won't come to North America until next year.) Ample has four stations already in operation in the city and plans to build an additional nine stations in the months to come. Stellantis will need to install modular batteries in the Fiat 500e in order to be compatible with Ample's swapping system. The process works by driving the vehicle into a station, where it gets raised slightly. Ample's robot arms remove the spent battery from underneath the vehicle, replace it with a fully charged one, and then lower the vehicle. The company says the whole process can take as little as five minutes. "Our system knows how many batteries are in the Fiat 500e, knows how to extract each one of those modules, and put them back in the same arrangement," Khaled Hassounah, CEO of Ample, said in a briefing with reporters.
Starting with a small fleet of shared vehicles in one city will help Stellantis see how well Ample's system works and whether it can be scaled to new markets and to include privately owned vehicles. If the company does decide to expand its partnership with Ample, the Fiat 500e will likely be the first vehicle to support the technology, said Ricardo Stamatti, senior VP for charging and energy at Stellantis. Customers who buy cars that are compatible with Ample's swapping system would then just subscribe to a battery, opening up a possible new line of revenue for Stellantis. "We believe that this is actually an infrastructure play that can and will scale," Stamatti added.
Stellantis will work with Ample to launch a battery swapping system for a fleet of Fiat 500e vehicles as part of a car-sharing service through its Free2move subsidiary. The service will first appear in Madrid in 2024, where the Fiat 500e is already available. (The tiny EV won't come to North America until next year.) Ample has four stations already in operation in the city and plans to build an additional nine stations in the months to come. Stellantis will need to install modular batteries in the Fiat 500e in order to be compatible with Ample's swapping system. The process works by driving the vehicle into a station, where it gets raised slightly. Ample's robot arms remove the spent battery from underneath the vehicle, replace it with a fully charged one, and then lower the vehicle. The company says the whole process can take as little as five minutes. "Our system knows how many batteries are in the Fiat 500e, knows how to extract each one of those modules, and put them back in the same arrangement," Khaled Hassounah, CEO of Ample, said in a briefing with reporters.
Starting with a small fleet of shared vehicles in one city will help Stellantis see how well Ample's system works and whether it can be scaled to new markets and to include privately owned vehicles. If the company does decide to expand its partnership with Ample, the Fiat 500e will likely be the first vehicle to support the technology, said Ricardo Stamatti, senior VP for charging and energy at Stellantis. Customers who buy cars that are compatible with Ample's swapping system would then just subscribe to a battery, opening up a possible new line of revenue for Stellantis. "We believe that this is actually an infrastructure play that can and will scale," Stamatti added.
500e is a compliance/city car (Score:3)
100 miles tops.
As such this is reasonable because the vehicles aren't expected to go far from where you have the battery swapper located.
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A city car, but not a compliance car. Cars of this size and with limited range are incredibly popular in Europe. The 500 model has sold 6m+ since its inception in 1957. Consumers really like the 500e.
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Is that supposed to be an impressive number of sales? Ford sold almost 2M F-150's last year alone.
Re:500e is a compliance/city car (Score:5, Informative)
Are you sure about that?
Last year it seems that Ford sold ~600k F-series vehicles in the US [goodcarbadcar.net], their biggest market.
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Good insight as barely anyone outside of the US and maybe a bit of Canada drives those tanks
Re:500e is a compliance/city car (Score:5, Funny)
I know several people who have them and they NEED them.
Basically because it's the only thing they can fit into...
Re: 500e is a compliance/city car (Score:1)
I believe that was exactly his point.
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a) No they haven't. b) The Ford F150 is sharing a market with essentially 2 other cars, while the Fiat 500 is sharing a market with every single car manufacturer in Europe and has lots of competition, and it's also often shunned as one of the worse cars in its category meaning that total sales for that *type* of car (you did realise the GP's point was about the type of car, not the brand and model itself right?) is highly popular, far more so than the F-150 wankwagon.
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That was a number so egregiously wrong, it could only have been pulled out of an ass that requires an F150 for transport. The actual figure for F150s is about 900k p.a. It's also a complete outlier. Only a tiny number of models sell in those numbers. Other cars can be quite popular while selling a lot less than a fucking F150.
Re:500e is a compliance/city car (Score:5, Informative)
According to Wikipedia: you can get the 500e with either 185 km (115 mi) or 320 km (199 mi); it was the best selling EV in Italy in 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Also since it charges at 85 kW in standard, I don't understand the advantage for them to do the battery swapping; I imagine it would be less expensive to install a fast chargers and hire a low wage valet to charge the fleet cars in 30 min instead of battery swapping that needs more equipment, more personnel training, has more safety risks.
Re:500e is a compliance/city car (Score:5, Interesting)
>>Also since it charges at 85 kW in standard, I don't understand the advantage for them to do the battery swapping
Battery lifetime is reduced by fast charging. In this business model, the driver owns the car but "rents" the battery, so it makes sense for the company that actually owns the batteries to get the most charge cycles out of them they can by slow charging. Also, if you have to wait for 30 minutes while someone else is using the only fast charger at a station, your "fast" charge now takes an hour AND you've degraded your battery. The battery swapping system actually needs less infrastructure than installing a bunch of redundant fast chargers just to handle peak demand.
Re: 500e is a compliance/city car (Score:2)
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Agree. Think of the average highway gas station. Now think of the number of batteries you're going to need to keep up with demand.
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Does anyone still do the battery rental thing? Renault did for a while, but I think they stopped about 5 years ago.
Nio has had battery swapping for its cars in Norway for a few years, and for longer in China. It takes 6 minutes and uses the cars autopilot to position itself in the bay. It's nice if you are in a big hurry and also means you never have to worry about battery degradation as you can always swap it out for a few bucks.
In the other hand, people have found that unless they are willing to starve th
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The majority of EV owners usually charge at home, at night, and only fast charge occasionally. Further, even with a fast charge you can avoid the worst effects of battery degradation by following the 10%-80% rule.
Battery swapping could make sense for fleet trucks and the like, but it completely fails to make economic sense otherwise. Proprietary tech, the difficulties of swapping 1,000 lb batteries with cooling and power attachments, standardization problems across cars and trucks, the trend towards structu
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Most European cities do not provide much infrastructure for fast charging and most houses do not have garages. The target market for the Fiat 500e will likely never connect it to a fast charger, opting to use slower streetside chargers that are ubiquitous in many European cities.
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The use case is somebody who can't charge at home or at work.
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For long trips, taking time to charge isn't such an issue as the driver needs a break too. In addition to people who can't charge at home or work, another potential use for this tech is taxis.
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"For long trips, taking time to charge isn't such an issue as the driver needs a break too"
I've got to disagree. Some people can (or choose to) drive 8 hours straight with only short breaks, or switch drivers.
A 1-3 hour break every 5 hours of driving? That adds a lot of time to a long trip.
And unless you plan those breaks out, want them, or expect them. They are not going to be a welcome thing.
That forces an over-night on a trip that otherwise wouldn't have it.
Might be good for roadside tourism revival.
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One to three hours??? I don't think so. Superchargers can typically give you 200 miles of range in about 20 minutes or so.
Newer battery tech is better, and Tesla (to pick one example) has split the battery in the CyberTruck such that you're basically charging two batteries at the same time, which in turn basically halves the charging time.
Regardless, I find it kind of funny how some people love to harp on what happens on that week-long vacation they take once a year... while completely managing to ignore th
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That's why I like the balance of a Tesla M3 and a Honda Pilot in the garage. They cover 98% of the car use cases. The Pilot gets filled up about once a month and the Tesla is the golf cart charged at home for practically everything around town, trips on the major highways and simply having 2 cars to share as needed.
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If you're really in a hurry to get somewhere that's 8+ hours away by car, you're better off booking a flight instead.
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I would like more EV options in the 80 to 100 mi range for daily use though.
It might sound like enough, but if you live somewhere with a disagreeable climate during most of the year, you're going to lose some of that range cooling/heating the cabin. It also depends on whether you're doing a bumper-to-bumper commute in somewhere like Miami, where you crawl your way to and from work at golf cart speeds, or if you'll be flying down the highway at 80MPH and your range is going to take a huge hit from the wind resistance.
Re: 500e is a compliance/city car (Score:2)
Yeah this is my problem. I have a half hour commute and live where it's cold, AND I do not have a place to park a car off-street, AND I cannot charge at work. And this is a pretty common set of problems to have in the USA. Many people do not have all of these problems, but many others do. I'm happy for people who can reasonably use an EV but I'm not looking forward to being in a dwindling market segment where it gets more and more problematic to own a gas vehicle but I also can't reasonably use an EV.
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100 miles tops.
As such this is reasonable because the vehicles aren't expected to go far from where you have the battery swapper located.
100-mile range and you're expected to "not go far from home" like an 8-year old playing in the streets?
Forget the ugliness of the car in general. We're listing all the reasons a battery swap becomes rather pointless. It's going to be plugged in like a smartphone with those kinds of statistics. Plug it into the garage wall and call it a night. Not like you're going to be able to use that glorified moped beyond a daily charging window that's likely more than capable of charging a battery while the driver
Battery swapping worked over 100 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
It worked over 100 years ago and there is little reason that it can not work now. It is not the only way to rapidly refuel electric vehicles, but it is viable in a lot of cases.
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To be generally useful would require a generally applicable battery swap mechanism.
This would essentially require that every vehicle use the same battery (or one of a limited subset of batteries).
If i have to go to a Tesla swap shop and someone in a Leaf or Fiat has to use a Leaf or Fiat swap because their batteries are different then this won't work out. A swap station could only reasonably be expected to have a few different size/shape batteries and the robot arms would have to recognize and understand e
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And I could imagine that during a regular working week or day I would use a smaller battery (less weight= less cost) and the maximum size for a longer trip.
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Yes agreed but how are we going to get the great variety of vehicles and makers we have now down to a few batteries?
The moment there is a government mandated technology, innovation crashes to a halt. I don't think we're at the point where we can honestly say battery tech has nearly peaked out. Quite the opposite, we're just now starting to see the bare beginnings of new battery tech coming out. Batteries haven't changed much in many years (or decades depending on how much innovation you require to call i
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It would just mean future EV's will be selected based on the type of interchangeable battery they have.
The Biden administration arrogantly refuses to recognize the industry EV leader in America.
Good luck on standardizing a battery interface.
Re: Battery swapping worked over 100 years ago (Score:2)
The image of gas stations where gas attendants are swapping out batteries like popping batteries out of a pen light is kinda funny.
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It worked over 100 years ago
I suppose this is the reason why the trend has become widespread, leading to a proliferation of electric trucks on the roads today.
Oh wait.
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Well the solution to that is simple: a coolant pump is small, so put it and the reservoir (if any) inside the battery module instead of mounting them outside, on the car body. Hell, apparently some EVs use an actual refrigeration cycle comparable to your heat pump or fridge, [*googles*] with something called R1234yf as the working fluid, so having a totally sealed cooling system must already be practical.
As for discarding that heat, integrate the radiator/condenser into the bottom of the battery module's
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I have a 1913 Dykes Motor Manual (it was one of my father's books). In it, they have the service procedures for several electric delivery trucks. At the time battery swapping was used to keep the trucks working through the day. It worked over 100 years ago and there is little reason that it can not work now. It is not the only way to rapidly refuel electric vehicles, but it is viable in a lot of cases.
100 years ago, was there a risk of a fire burning so hot it would destroy the entire car and potentially cars nearby, literally burning for many hours when performing battery swaps at the extreme rate of peak battery-swap hour, in a society slam-full of procrastinators bitching in the background complaining that it's taking too long?
Let's just stop pretending the 100-year old solution even remotely resembles the challenges of today. I feel for the 19-year old kid making barely more than minimum wage slingi
Better Place (Score:2)
What, never heard of it? Well, they went bankrupt about 10 years ago. I expect this venture will meet a similar fate. For all its potential merits, people and companies just don't seem interested.
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Nio is doing it in China, which has a much, much larger EV uptake that we do in the US or in the EU.
They're pretty close to bankruptcy too.
Irrational objections (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly this really the answer to making EVs actually work.
It solves so many problems.
1) You being stuck with major major capital expense when your older model EV needs a replacement battery, you don't own battery networks of 'filling stations' do, and cost of battery ware is amortized over every swap.
2) Range anxiety, you just need 300mi or so for a standard passenger car, you hit the station, 10min later you are out of there with swapped charged batter, just like filling your tank today.
3) People who can'
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He suffers from some reduced range but just trades out the bad battery again next time he recharges.
It could be that the symptoms of a bad battery are more subtle than that and he only discovers the battery at the wrong moment of the trip. And it's a game you'll play at every weekly swap. It's a bit of mental stress some people won't want.
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https://www.wric.com/news/loca... [wric.com]
https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com]
https://baynews9.com/fl/tampa/... [baynews9.com]
The equivalent of this *never* happens with ICE vehicles. Right?
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The equivalent of this *never* happens with ICE vehicles. Right?
N.B. I was not defending ICE, only reacting on the debate: charging the same EV battery VS. swapping the EV battery.
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I know someone who would refuse to go for this. I have a buddy who loves his Chevy EV. I proposed to him long ago that in order for EVs to gain more traction (pun intended) with the general public is to drastically shorten the recharge time, and the best way to do that is battery swapping. He says no way would he do that. He says when he bought the car he bought a brand new battery and doesn't want to swap it for someone's worn out junk... It's like getting emotionally attached to a propane tank...
I totally get both points of view. But your comment has swung me from favouring your point of view, to favouring that of your friend. And all it took was your propane tank analogy.
Right now in my barbecue I have a slightly rusty, sketchy-looking propane tank which I traded a much nicer one for. I know the tank is probably OK 'because procedures'. But it still bothered me two days ago when I was using the barbecue. I think a lot of drivers will feel something like that about batteries; especially the car-pro
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Taiwan has a system like this for scooters, but the swapping is done manually so it's easier. Also Taiwan is less cr
Fleet swapping might be rare (Score:2)
Thinking about it, I think it'd be rare even for fleet vehicles.
For example, one of the biggest fleets of EVs might end up being the postal fleet. They average under 25(40?) miles per day, only operate for 8-12 hours, etc... Plugging them into slow chargers overnight is easy. No need for swaps.
If mileage per vehicle is actually pretty low, you're good to go.
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The reason some people have road trip anxiety with EVs is because you might run out of juice where there is no charger, or you get to the charger and it doesn't work. Admittedly, this situation should be improving next year when dongles to use Tesla's supercharger network become available.
Battery swapping doesn't solve any of these problems because if there's no swap station along your route or they're out of (or don't carry) a battery for your vehicle then you're still SOL. And if we're gonna build out a
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and if one does and he gets one, in the grand scheme of things, so what?
When it's you or your loved one stuck on the side of the road in middle-o-nowhere because the 200-mile battery from eWhores shit the bed 80 miles into a trip, you probably won't be so-what dismissive.
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I'm presuming that as a responsible EV owner you're monitoring your remaining charge and behaving accordingly. Does anyone say "I know I get about 300 miles from a tank of gas" and then never look at the gas gauge for 300 miles?
EV gas gauging does not work like gas in a tank. It depends quite a bit in how it’s done, and both the battery and car use separate calculations. In most modern EV BMS I’m aware of, they use smart gas gauging and keep track of the amp hours in and out to determine a percent remaining figure, along with the total kWh remaining. It can get out of whack if the battery never fully cycles because the predictive figure becomes more of a guess than an estimate from actual use. If the battery has mo
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I'm presuming that as a responsible EV owner you're monitoring your remaining charge and behaving accordingly. Does anyone say "I know I get about 300 miles from a tank of gas" and then never look at the gas gauge for 300 miles?
No, I'm more presuming the shady eWhore pimping used batteries cares more about profit than battery quality monitoring in a highly deregulated environment. As if Go-Green greed, will be any different than every other flavor of greed.
Not to mention the EV owner on vacation with a call full of obese humans running the A/C full blast while driving through mountains in 90-degree weather. When it comes to EV range, reality matters.
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The way Nio handles it in Norway, where they have been operating for a while, is that they guarantee to give you a good battery. If the battery is degraded they just remove it from circulation and refurbish it.
It's actually great for the owner because if their battery ever does degrade they can just swap it.
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I know someone who would refuse to go for this..He says when he bought the car he bought a brand new battery and doesn't want to swap it for someone's worn out junk.
I've had the same conversation with my household finance committee (that is, my wife). She also doesn't buy the argument that (a) I would need to no longer think of the car and the battery as a single unit I bought, (b) buying a car without a battery ought to be less expensive, and (c) I will be swapping my used battery for a better brand new one at least as often as I'm doing the reverse. Now that I think about it, it's more of the buy-versus-lease discussion for the car itself.
It's a mindset change. I use
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I've gotten leaky propane canisters several times from the "swap a propane" major companies. No way would I swap a battery - you're relying on some random person to do their job where a complete test would be too time consuming, and it's likely their inspection won't catch a bunch of edge cases for damage/issues anyway. After the last issue, it was a big enough obvious problem that I'll never do that again. I went out and got my own tank which was cheaper after a few fills and I'm happier since.
Plus, from a
Ample (Score:1)
How long before this company is forced to change its name under relentless legal pressure from a certain fruit company?
I'm still holding out for flow batteries (Score:2)
Imagine filling up with what is, as far as the consumer is concerned, 'liquid battery'. It's still a little more complicated than filling with gas since you're not burning anything and have to drain the old fluid first, but it's easier than a hardware swap and faster than plugging in to charge.
Unfortunately, the tech isn't really there yet, especially for mobile applications.
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There is a company claiming they're about to commercialize a flow battery that has a 23% higher energy density than lithium ion.
I did a quick search for supporting papers, but it appears flow battery researchers love to publish results in amp hours per litre without telling you what voltage their chosen chemistry provides. Influit's press release was the only thing I could find that in any way compared apples to apples.
Anyway, the point is that flow batteries aren't limited to a single compound and thus pow
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There is a company claiming they're about to commercialize a flow battery that has a 23% higher energy density than lithium ion.
I did a quick search for supporting papers, but it appears flow battery researchers love to publish results in amp hours per litre without telling you what voltage their chosen chemistry provides. Influit's press release was the only thing I could find that in any way compared apples to apples.
Anyway, the point is that flow batteries aren't limited to a single compound and thus power densities vary. Hope remains.
This speaks a lot to the capacity problem. However, lithium ion comes with its own risks regarding safety. Mainly the fire risk when the battery is compromised.
What are the risks related to this alternative? I mean since we're talking about these things flying down a highway at 80MPH mere inches from each other, involved in every kind of horrific accident scenario that humans are still perfectly designed to do in all of the other vehicles from the last half century still on the road.
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They're generally filled with non-flammable binary goo that generates power when mixed across a special membrane.
Whether those non-flammable goos are toxic I have no clue. Worse than that, it's been awhile since I last read up on the subject and I have no idea how many details may have changed since.
Still, there seems to be a lot less 'Hell on Earth' potential than a lithium ion fire provides.
Wow (Score:2)
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I don't even believe there will be CHARGERS everywhere I want to go when away from home. Now I am to believe there will be a BATTERY SWAP STATION in those places??
I envision every gas station continuing to be fed with gasoline...in order to power the generators...to charge all the batteries they'll rent instead.
Go Green.
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Yes so a single pump gas stand in a small town is going to be doing that.
Not sure what towns you visit (last time I saw a single gas pump there was a phone booth nearby), but I don't imagine the EV market will penetrate that deep into the backwoods with any marketing strategy short of someone's cold dead hands.
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I don't even believe there will be CHARGERS everywhere I want to go when away from home. Now I am to believe there will be a BATTERY SWAP STATION in those places??
Where do you travel to that doesn't have electricity?
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When you run out of petrol, you might just tip in a 5L can of petrol to get you to the next petrol station. If you run out of electricity, I can see that it might be similar - roll out the extension cord, and charge for just long enough to get to a proper fast charger... or to just barely get home, then you can comfortably plug in overnight.
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How do you know what is "just enough to get you home" when driving through deep snow and a headwind while using the heat pump?
One could ask the same question of an ICE vehicle.
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It doesn't matter. You call the automobile association and they bring you gas or you call someone you know. People on the highway will lend you a gas can with a bit of gas left after atving. Or the most likely answer is that you should have stopped at one of the three gas stations in the last 10 miles.
Well, sure. But this isn't really any different from an electric car. If you run out of electricity (which happens gradually - an EV doesn't just stop dead. You can usually limp a couple of miles at reduced speed if necessary) you can use an extension cable to plug into a nearby socket. Have a coffee, use the restroom, go for a walk, whatever. Soon you will have the equivalent range of that "bit of gas" and can be on your way again. If you have to call the automobile association, they can give you a quick t
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I don't even believe there will be CHARGERS everywhere I want to go when away from home.
I've driven through the European continent on long international trips multiple times with an EV already. What you don't "believe" already exists.
But in any case this isn't for "away from home" this is for fleet management, i.e. for your home (or rather business).
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Legacy Auto is Clueless (Score:2)
This is just another illustration of the cluelessness of legacy auto.
Battery swapping has been tried by other companies (starting with "Better Place" in 2007 and later including Tesla) and found to be wanting in terms of cost, convenience, etc. It has a very narrow use case (i.e. city people who don't drive very far from home and who don't have access to charging).
It's a "tried and failed" solution from a bygone age.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/ev-b... [ieee.org]
Addresses 3 out of 4 common gripes (Score:2)
1. Charging takes too long. Solves this.
2. Charging stalls are often broken. Since the swap station is a bigger capital investment than a stall, it would presumably by staffed and attended to more carefully.
3. What to do in case of a blackout? To work as advertised, a station would need to keep a reserve of probably a few dozen batteries per slot anyway. The marginal cost of keeping a larger reserve (whether self-directed in preparation for winter weather or by local regulatory requirements) should be a fai