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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.

You raise excellent points. But it was not my idea, it came from Tesla. So presumably they had at least theorized a method of operating a “battery station” to replace the “gas station”. I don’t know if they ever built more than a prototype that I saw in their video. But we do know they have deployed many of their own charging stations strategically. At a time, charging was free for Tesla owners who purchased before 2019 but now I think there is a fee for new buyers.

Presumably, if it was Tesla operated or Tesla franchised, it would eliminate the problems with interchangeability and warranty. They would own the batteries, and lease them to you 300 miles at a time (or whatever distance they can achieve). Perhaps, they would charge based on the range. A better design and ability to hold a fresh charge would eliminate other issues.

But yes, I don’t see that you can just swap a Tesla battery pack for a Ford pack or a Porsche pack.

For most people doing everyday things, it’s not a big deal. You charge it up at home, or at work, or at the mall (when they re-open :-)) etc. For road trips and distance travelers, truckers etc, it’s is an issue that drivers have to stop every 300 or so miles and wait around for an hour or more to recharge. As I’m sure you’re familiar, these batteries lose their ability to hold a charge. I’m still using an iPhone 6 for my own reasons, it is obviously several years old and I don’t use it all that much but it used to last 36 hours or so... now it can’t hold a charge for 12 hours anymore. (Perhaps Apple caused some of this with various updates now using more resources in the background). At least I get to run it down near zero before re-charging it which supposedly helps battery life.

On further thought, a franchised “battery swap station” that was capable of swapping out a variety of different packs for different brands is not a half bad idea. It would of course require that carmakers implement more standard designs, and an easy plug and play method of swapping them out. So you could pull into any “battery station” in any EV and they would have the various models in stock ready to swap out, recharge, and swap again.

Like gasoline, you pay as you go. And the computers are probably capable of figuring out your particular efficiency e.g. highway driving will likely allow a charge to last longer than city traffic given that many of the cars to recycle some of the energy expended from wheels and brakes back into the power packs.