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To: USFRIENDINVICTORIA

Yes, I read that summary but didn’t see the details in the OP. Your comment was indeed my assumption; but just as well you could move the batteries to another “new” car.

A few years back Tesla put out a video showing a prototype battery exchange side by side with a video of filling up a tank of gas. What they were showing was you could drive a Tesla into a “battery exchange station” where they would simply pull out your nearly empty batteries, and have freshly charged batteries installed in about the same time as it would take to fill a tank of gasoline. Then the removed batteries would go into a charger for a few hours and swapped into another vehicle sometime later. In other words, if you wanted to take a road trip there would be no need to drive to a charging station, maybe wait for a high volt charger to open up, and and then 30-60 minutes to get juiced up.

I see ads for home battery systems all the times; still quite expensive. They may make economic sense at the current time but probably not if they become ubiquitous unless the prices for the batteries come way down. That could happen if they go “1 million miles” and can be dual/triple use for cars, homes, warehouses etc. But no matter what, energy has to be generated and “peak usage time” could sprawl a bit.


69 posted on 06/09/2020 7:48:03 AM PDT by monkeyshine (live and let live is dead)
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To: monkeyshine
Your alternative strategy (battery swapping) has a lot of merits -- and some problems. As long as governments keep their thumbs off the scales; I trust the market to sort it all out. With subsidies and inefficient regulations, all bets are off.

Battery swapping is probably a great idea for fleets -- whether autos (taxis) delivery trucks or buses. Fleet vehicles have a single owner; so the battery packs can be managed properly.

However, I think that a common pool of batteries (for swapping) would also create problems for individual car owners. Some drivers would look after the battery, others would abuse them (e.g. by draining it). Inevitably, there would be winners and losers -- swapping would save many people money, and cost others more than the keep-it-and-charge-it model.

There's also the problem of standardization -- or, rather the lack thereof. Every manufacturer will have its own battery pack, or several different models, or several versions of the same model (same configuration, but different capacities). That adds up to a huge inventory for battery-swapping businesses -- a lot costlier than having one or a few different types of chargers. Different configurations would also require different changing equipment or extra time to adjust the equipment for different batteries.

The time-saving for swapping vs. charging is an important plus for swapping -- but, it would only matter for long road trips. Overnight charging works for commuting, and that negates the time-saving for swapping. As battery tech progresses, charging time should shorten.

AFAIK, there is a large shortage of storage capacity. The main form is pumped hydro storage, and other techs are coming on-stream (e.g. gravity storage). Traditionally, baseload is handled by nuclear, hydro, or coal generation and peak load falls to more expensive, fast-response methods. With facking, natural gas is cheap; so the gap between peak and baseload generation methods has narrowed.

So-called 'green energy' is the biggie. A solar or wind plant needs a lot of backup storage. That's mainly handled by the grid (at great expense); but, storage is also important. Batteries have the advantage of near-instantaneous response; so they can be used to smooth out the bumps in wind or solar generation. Unless wind and solar go away, there's probably a huge market for battery backup storage at wind and solar plants to improve the quality of their output. That could be an aftermarket for these MM-mile batteries -- sell your battery to a wind farm, and reduce your cost of auto ownership.

77 posted on 06/09/2020 4:16:57 PM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
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