Battery swapped EVs are new hot topic in the electric vehicle industry. Especially with NIO taking Norway by storm. But I think this technology might not look so bright as everyone portrays it.

  1. Batteries in swap stations are constantly charged with big power, and fast charging is degrading batteries faster. [Source needed]
  2. There needs to be more batteries than cars. But each battery without a car, is wasted opportunity.
  3. Charging speeds are getting faster. With 800V battery packs it’s possible to charge 80% of a car in about 18 minutes.
  4. At the moment NIO is not even owner of battery pack, they outsource it to a different company.
  5. Cost of every swap station is around 600’000 GBP. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaLiJQZSews) At that price range, it’s possible to build 6 Tesla Supercharger spots.
  6. If battery station gets damaged or is down for maintenance, it disrupts users ability to keep their cars usable.
  7. For some reason, NIO cars have low Fast charging speeds, at the moment I’m not sure why. But if that is somehow tied to battery being swappable, then Fast charging isn’t even a good alternative for NIO cars.
  8. Cars with ability to swap battery packs will always be more expensive and have more space taken up by battery pack and it’s “dynamic” connector - it’s same as what we went trough with phone batteries, to make phones slimmer, manufacturers redesigned whole battery assembly and connectors to make it more compact at the cost of modularity.
  9. It’s said that You will always get a good and reliable battery pack. But it will not always be the case, what happens if they give You a bad one, and the next one is even worse? That is a common theme in all industries that at the begginging everything is great, but later the cost cutting starts to make everything worse because some accountant is trying to make more money for the company.
  10. They will be a target for thieves and hackers. This will be a challenge to protect those battery packs from being stolen. I can imagine a hacker asking a battery station to present a battery pack to a platform and then steal ing it with ramp truck or trailer and winch. Easy $20’000 for a battery pack.

That's it for this post, thanks for reading!