Nio is a Chinese auto maker that offers an alternative to charging: just swapping out the whole battery whenever you need it. I borrowed one of their cars. ■...
My wife thinks I’m insane, but my whole family is built where we would drive 10+ hours (710miles~) a couple times a year with only 1 stop at mile like 500 for fuel and a snack. Otherwise we’d just keep going. Some people don’t need a break for a LOOOONNNNGGGG time when driving. Of my friend group (20th people) on road trips only 2/3 need stops every so often. Even my wife has adjusted to my driving nature.
inb4: Yeah, been to doctors, had tests done, had scans done, blahblah, apparently there isn’t anything wrong I’m just cursed with…if I drink something I will have to pee like 66.67% of that amount back out relatively soon.
It sucks for drives. It sucks for flights. It sucks for movies at movie theaters. It sucks for plays. I typically just go on the verge of dehydrated so I don’t have to pee at all.
The first road trip my wife and I did when we were dating I was like 45 into the drive and she said “I have to pee” right after she had gone at the house. It set me up for a trip where I was stopping about once every 2ish hours or so. She was drinking a ton of water and didn’t realize she should pace herself.
Lol I just drove 14 hours one way for thxgiving. Waiting 30+ min every 250 miles is a deal breaker… I can gas and piss in less than ten min once every 400 miles.
You’d add like 5 hours to that drive at least. Just waiting for charges.
I mean, you just drove what, 800 miles in one day? Youre an extreme outlier, seeing as most people drive around 40.
Assuming 3 stops, you already waited around 30 min on that trip, but youre saying 90 makes it impossible for you?
The extra 1hr for charging vs gas makes your 14hr one way trip into a 15hr one way trip, and that’s the unbearable part? 14hr is totally workable, 15hr is a deal breaker?
“Mom, I would love to do my normal 14hr drive, but now that i have an EV and its 15hrs, I just can’t bear to do it?”
I don’t know why you’d trust a giant battery, absolutely vital to the operation of your car, to some random 3rd party service. To be arbitrarily replaced. And need to rely on it for X miles. Particularly when your use case where you’d even want a quick swap is traveling outside a regular charges’ range.
Edit - forgot the potential for catastrophic failure. Batteries can go boom.
Only in this instance it’s not a third party, it’s the car manufacturer. It’s just like Tesla and their super chargers. Only these guys are replacing the battery instead of charging it.
Does the car warranty extend to cover the replacement battery just as if it was the original battery? Given an EV battery is a pretty significant part of the cost of the entire vehicle I wouldn’t trust a swapped battery unless the manufacturer made it very clear that they would treat it as if it was the original battery if any issues arose with it. The last thing I would want is to have to fight with Tesla or whoever if the replacement battery fails and they claim it’s not covered by their warranty.
Uh. It’s literally a 3rd party company that’s currently doing a single manufacturer atm, with explicitly (detailed in the video) plans to expand to other manufacturers.
For how much people seem to know about catalytic converter theft, they seem eager to have an easily removed battery. And full trust in no bad actors finding a way to exploit these stations for the metals in the batteries.
You have that backwards. The vehicle is good for the life of the battery. We could design EV where the shell and motor last 30 years, and the battery just swaps out every decade or so.
Cars get in accidents all the time, many of which will total it. Over time, the probability of that reaches 1.0. Most cars will not make it to 30 years regardless of how well they’re made.
Yeah and that’s why I’m not advocating for 100 year cars.
I’d be pretty happy with 20 years to, but 10 just feels like planned obsolescence.
I also messed around with the math very loosly, and only accounting for crashes that total a car, they could be expected to go 20 years or more on average.
And that’s now with all the terrible driving that happens, especially at night.
With slight deacrease in accident frequncy that number can increase a lot.
So maybe 30 is a bit much for now, but I’d still like an ev that would claim to last 20 yeara.
Making cars repairable and making the parts swappable will extend other cars lives, especially if they standardize around certain parts like batteries.
I don’t think so. Think of the engineering challenges. The battery would have to be a separate structure so more weight, less range/performance, more wear on tires and brakes, less rigidity unless you add even more weight, etc.
Batteries can be replaced now. It’s just a time consuming job but one that might only need doing once.
Can’t tell if this is a serious comment or not… Sure a battery will last as long as the car, but it’s of limited use of it only holds 30% of its original capacity after 7 or 8 years. Sure. It’ll do 75 miles, so still useful for city drivers, but not for its intended use.
Yep! Thats about what I think. I will not buy a car that are like most modern day cell phones. If the battery dies, I want to be able to replace it. Even better if there is a easy charging station like the above and giving the consumer more options.
I find this kind of comments so stupid. The technology is well beyond proven. Logistics have had swappable batteries for over 15 years since the time of acid batteries. Nio is a rental company first and for them the model seems to be working. It’s compelling for road trips specially since most of the charging stations are broken most of the time and for extremely dense cities where people aren’t allowed to access power plugs at parking spaces. I mean, on the suburbanite hellscape, charging at home will always make more sense, but the US is not the entirety of the world. This things seem to be ripe for success in Asia and Europe.
Sure it can be broken, but since the company runs it and it’s not a set and forget facility, they have a higher incentive to keep it serviced, specially as the company owns the batteries. Tesla’s answer to broken stations is usually “we don’t care use the one next to it that’s derated and only charges at the lowest speed”. While apparently this facilities can fit 3 or 4 swap stations on the same space. One station out of order adds no wait time, and as a last resort it can still have a regular charging station next to it. I fail to see how people settle so quickly on the status quo that companies force them to, and as soon as anything vaguely threatens the status quo they purportedly hate, they jump and attack the alternative. Having options is a good thing, having multiple companies trying different things is a good thing, silver bullets don’t exist, we are all in this together, what is not good is a zero-sum mindset where only monopolistic one-size-fits-all offers can exist.
I have to ask why? I can’t see any positives outside of fleet vehicles and there are plenty of negatives.
Speed, for one. 5 minutes vs 30 minutes to an hour to be fully charged. Makes a big difference for road trips where you need to recharge on the way.
I’m not sure I agree. Lots of EVs have a 250+ mile range. I’d need a 30 minute break after driving that kind of distance.
My wife thinks I’m insane, but my whole family is built where we would drive 10+ hours (710miles~) a couple times a year with only 1 stop at mile like 500 for fuel and a snack. Otherwise we’d just keep going. Some people don’t need a break for a LOOOONNNNGGGG time when driving. Of my friend group (20th people) on road trips only 2/3 need stops every so often. Even my wife has adjusted to my driving nature.
Yeah I can do 10 hour drives also. My partner needs to use the restroom every 30 minutes. If they’ve had any amount of water, it’s every 15 minutes.
Hey it’s me!
It sucks.
inb4: Yeah, been to doctors, had tests done, had scans done, blahblah, apparently there isn’t anything wrong I’m just cursed with…if I drink something I will have to pee like 66.67% of that amount back out relatively soon.
It sucks for drives. It sucks for flights. It sucks for movies at movie theaters. It sucks for plays. I typically just go on the verge of dehydrated so I don’t have to pee at all.
I’m sorry. I know it’s quite a burden.
The first road trip my wife and I did when we were dating I was like 45 into the drive and she said “I have to pee” right after she had gone at the house. It set me up for a trip where I was stopping about once every 2ish hours or so. She was drinking a ton of water and didn’t realize she should pace herself.
Lol I just drove 14 hours one way for thxgiving. Waiting 30+ min every 250 miles is a deal breaker… I can gas and piss in less than ten min once every 400 miles. You’d add like 5 hours to that drive at least. Just waiting for charges.
People don’t want to hear stuff like that but it is a real disadvantage.
And I own an EV.
I mean, you just drove what, 800 miles in one day? Youre an extreme outlier, seeing as most people drive around 40.
Assuming 3 stops, you already waited around 30 min on that trip, but youre saying 90 makes it impossible for you?
The extra 1hr for charging vs gas makes your 14hr one way trip into a 15hr one way trip, and that’s the unbearable part? 14hr is totally workable, 15hr is a deal breaker?
“Mom, I would love to do my normal 14hr drive, but now that i have an EV and its 15hrs, I just can’t bear to do it?”
I don’t know why you’d trust a giant battery, absolutely vital to the operation of your car, to some random 3rd party service. To be arbitrarily replaced. And need to rely on it for X miles. Particularly when your use case where you’d even want a quick swap is traveling outside a regular charges’ range.
Edit - forgot the potential for catastrophic failure. Batteries can go boom.
Only in this instance it’s not a third party, it’s the car manufacturer. It’s just like Tesla and their super chargers. Only these guys are replacing the battery instead of charging it.
Does the car warranty extend to cover the replacement battery just as if it was the original battery? Given an EV battery is a pretty significant part of the cost of the entire vehicle I wouldn’t trust a swapped battery unless the manufacturer made it very clear that they would treat it as if it was the original battery if any issues arose with it. The last thing I would want is to have to fight with Tesla or whoever if the replacement battery fails and they claim it’s not covered by their warranty.
If you watched the video, you would know you don’t actually own the battery but lease it from the manufaturer.
All I did was watch a video at way to late at night.
Uh. It’s literally a 3rd party company that’s currently doing a single manufacturer atm, with explicitly (detailed in the video) plans to expand to other manufacturers.
For how much people seem to know about catalytic converter theft, they seem eager to have an easily removed battery. And full trust in no bad actors finding a way to exploit these stations for the metals in the batteries.
Repairability. A battery should be able to be replaced.
Having options is good for the consumer.
Aren’t EV batteries good for the life of the vehicle? Why would you want to replace one?
You have that backwards. The vehicle is good for the life of the battery. We could design EV where the shell and motor last 30 years, and the battery just swaps out every decade or so.
Very few cars now last 30 years. The US average is 12.5, which is about how long EV batteries are expected to last.
But you still have it backwards.
We could very easily design and build a car that lasts 30 years. But we don’t, because manufacturers don’t want them to last that long.
Evs don’t have transmissions, or complicated engines, and the wear on brakes is much less with regenerative braking.
Other things like air conditioning and interior coverings could be easily servicable
Why should the life of an ev by limited by its battery?
Cars get in accidents all the time, many of which will total it. Over time, the probability of that reaches 1.0. Most cars will not make it to 30 years regardless of how well they’re made.
Yeah and that’s why I’m not advocating for 100 year cars.
I’d be pretty happy with 20 years to, but 10 just feels like planned obsolescence.
I also messed around with the math very loosly, and only accounting for crashes that total a car, they could be expected to go 20 years or more on average.
And that’s now with all the terrible driving that happens, especially at night. With slight deacrease in accident frequncy that number can increase a lot.
So maybe 30 is a bit much for now, but I’d still like an ev that would claim to last 20 yeara.
Either way, you’re complaining that EVs don’t do something that ICE cars also don’t do.
Making cars repairable and making the parts swappable will extend other cars lives, especially if they standardize around certain parts like batteries.
I don’t think so. Think of the engineering challenges. The battery would have to be a separate structure so more weight, less range/performance, more wear on tires and brakes, less rigidity unless you add even more weight, etc.
Batteries can be replaced now. It’s just a time consuming job but one that might only need doing once.
Can’t tell if this is a serious comment or not… Sure a battery will last as long as the car, but it’s of limited use of it only holds 30% of its original capacity after 7 or 8 years. Sure. It’ll do 75 miles, so still useful for city drivers, but not for its intended use.
Yep! Thats about what I think. I will not buy a car that are like most modern day cell phones. If the battery dies, I want to be able to replace it. Even better if there is a easy charging station like the above and giving the consumer more options.
So far most ev batteries do much better than cell phones, as long as they have cooling.
EV batteries lose about 1-2‰ per year. At the high end, that would be down to 78% after 10 years. A 300mi EV would still do 230mi.
Cars need to repairable. Plus lithium fails quite a bit.
If a car can work 10+ years thats a good thing. And most lithium based batteries will not last that long.
I don’t think that’s a fair statement in relation to EV batteries. Most of them are proving to last well over 10 years.
I find this kind of comments so stupid. The technology is well beyond proven. Logistics have had swappable batteries for over 15 years since the time of acid batteries. Nio is a rental company first and for them the model seems to be working. It’s compelling for road trips specially since most of the charging stations are broken most of the time and for extremely dense cities where people aren’t allowed to access power plugs at parking spaces. I mean, on the suburbanite hellscape, charging at home will always make more sense, but the US is not the entirety of the world. This things seem to be ripe for success in Asia and Europe.
Do you think the battery swap station won’t be broken too?
Sure it can be broken, but since the company runs it and it’s not a set and forget facility, they have a higher incentive to keep it serviced, specially as the company owns the batteries. Tesla’s answer to broken stations is usually “we don’t care use the one next to it that’s derated and only charges at the lowest speed”. While apparently this facilities can fit 3 or 4 swap stations on the same space. One station out of order adds no wait time, and as a last resort it can still have a regular charging station next to it. I fail to see how people settle so quickly on the status quo that companies force them to, and as soon as anything vaguely threatens the status quo they purportedly hate, they jump and attack the alternative. Having options is a good thing, having multiple companies trying different things is a good thing, silver bullets don’t exist, we are all in this together, what is not good is a zero-sum mindset where only monopolistic one-size-fits-all offers can exist.
Nice.
That’s where I stopped reading.
20 below and you can swap out the battery quickly. Can’t charge it if it’s dead.