In designing the future, it's important to think what's doable
But not just doable as a test or demonstration, but rather doable as an ordinary every day operation.
In Formula 1 racing, they can do a pit stop in about 7 seconds
With selected highly skilled and athletic pit crews highly driven to make it as fast as possible, and with a budget for any reasonable expense that saves any time, because every second really counts. Not with ordinary people with ordinary drive and ability, serving other ordinary people with normal concern about time.
Is it possible to swap a battery in 7 seconds? Probably so, quite possibly in less time if you have well designed batteries and cars, and a drive to save every possibly second. Is it likely to happen millions of times a year (or billions if they are really going to replace gasoline powered cars)? No.
The designed 7 second swap may still make sense though, even if most of the time it winds up taking 20 second, or even a couple of minutes, in the real world.
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.
In a major cities downtown, the land is a significant consideration, not so much in the suburbs. Different solutions would work for different situations.
Imagine hundreds of cars parked waiting for or receiving a charge.
Why? Are charging and/or battery swap points going to be so rare compared to the number of electric cars? Right now the quick charge points I do see are often empty.
Still a lesser version of that same scenario could be applicable. If electric cars become really common, a large percentage of the total cars on the road, than even if quick charge points become as common as gasoline pumps an hour per charge would result in backups (even if not normally backups of hundreds of cars).
With low demand charging stations are simpler and cheaper. Battery swaps don't make sense in such a scenario. The chargers don't require a stockpile of batteries, employees to perform the swap, etc. Its a lot more expensive to get the basic minimum, even if for a given (high) level of throughput it might cost less, at least in expensive areas.
With high demand, and in high density/expensive places a swap station might be he way to go. |
