Tesla has demonstrated a battery swap in about 90 seconds: <
in 7 seconds, or 7 minutes I think, maybe 70 minutes.> Elon Musk did a demo showing a race between gasoline filling and battery swapping. But yes, those you showed are not the right sort of battery for swapping.
Ah, the old chicken and egg argument. That's one of the ones I'd get in the oil industry. Another the refiners would trot out was "Maurice, that would cost umpty$billion". I would counter the argument by breaking it down to cents per litre per motorist with umpty million motorists seeing benefits. Suddenly $billions turned to nothing much at all. <
Even for redesigned cars I'm skeptical about 7 second (and maybe 70 second) swaps because the batteries needed for a decent range pure electric are massive and bulky. Its not on good sized battery, its batteries taking a noticeable fraction of the total cars space. I supposed if quick change was common you could go with lower range, because you could "fill up" quickly, but there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem there, the cars are not going to be redesigned to use a single module battery pack with less range, so that they can use 7 (or 30 or whatever) second replacement until such change setups are reasonably common. >
What matters is the economics for the man in the street.
If electricity is the way to go, the chickens will come home to roost. They will lay eggs. There will be chickens and eggs everywhere. Motorists will buy megatons of roast chicken and poached eggs. They'll go with down eiderdowns [hmm, looks like they already did] and warm down jackets. Drinking gasoline for breakfast will go right out of fashion. Egg nogs will be the order of the day.
As you mentioned, swapping BIG batteries would be more tricky. But 3 or 4 small modular batteries would not. Mostly people would need only one battery for tootling around town. If going on a mega trip, they might plug in more range. Or just stop a few times en route for a new little battery. A few stops of 7 seconds or even 20 seconds is not much.
The start would be for an Uber fleet or some such, operating in a small area. Then it would expand. Like cancer cells. Get one going and the others follow. Copying the first.
Mqurice |
