In designing the future, it's important to think what's doable, not how things were done in the past: <
While 7 seconds seems to be pushing things, it should be possible, will properly designed electric cars, to swap batteries as quickly as you can fill up a gas tank. Of course to do that you would have to have multiple batteries on hand, probably a charger for them to (they could be charged somewhere else and moved around but that creates its own costs and complications). You also have to have a process of securing the batteries, validating the swap (so people can't just grab a free battery, they have to give up an old one, money, or both), and physically performing the transfer. It would seem to me to be simpler and cheaper to just have a charging unit. Of course that would also be slower.>
In Formula 1 racing, they can do a pit stop in about 7 seconds. Pit stops in racing include complete wheel changes, refueling and even replacement of body parts.
To pull out one battery and shove in another would be really easy. A matter of a few seconds in a well-designed system.
Recharging would be done on site nearly always as moving batteries around is a lot more expensive than taking high voltage wires to where the electricity is needed, as is done in cities everywhere.
There is no reason that the battery should be owned by the car owner. All they would buy is the electricity difference between the old and new battery.
You say "simpler and cheaper to just have a charging unit". It's not cheap to have a car parked for an hour waiting for a recharge. The land at the recharge site is not free while they wait. The time taken hooked up to the charging unit is not free either. With a 7SSS the cost of the land per swap would be nearly zero and the cost of the equipment to swap the battery also zero per swap.
Imagine hundreds of cars parked waiting for or receiving a charge. The charging station would need a hundred charging points. A single 7SSS lane could handle the same number of cars with no waiting for the car drivers - just sit in the car for 7 seconds then zip off to 100 kph in a few seconds.
Mqurice |
