A robot just swapped my electric car's battery

This may be obvious to folks who already follow EVs, but for me as an outsider: there are so many more manufacturers, and so many more innovations, than I thought!

This would be good for buses imo, come back from doing a route and have a swapped out, fully charged battery ready to go and leave the other one to charge and ready as needed. Just depends on whether the depots could accommodate the infrastructure and if its affordable for them.

As an owner of a Nio ES6 in Beijing, I can offer more information on this: 1. The batteries are in fact monitored for degradation, and when it goes below a certain threshold (I think its 75%), batteries inside the holder are partially replaced. No owner expects a new battery after each swap, but they expect a battery that performs reasonably well. It is not about saving money, but mostly about convenience (as mentioned in the video, home charging is not available to all in dense cities) and flexibility (people do swap for bigger battery for longer trips). 2. Despite the fact that the battery holder is standardized. Many innovations still happen inside the battery holder, in the battery material level. In fact, a new semi-solid state 150 kwh battery option is introduced recently for renting/swapping. 3. If the owners of the cars choose to use the battery swapping. They either pay a monthly fee or a one-time fee per swap. This supposedly cover the long-term maintenance and operational cost. I have not done any detail calculation, but I think the viability really depends on how many cars will be sold. 4. If Nio goes out of business, there would be inconvenience to the owners, but not because of the battery swapping (you can still charge your car the conventional way), but because there will no more OTA updates, which are essential for improving the assisted driving algorithms inside the car, which is one of the key value propositions for all EV startups in China.

It’s too bad no one has thought of putting a swappable battery into a cell phone! Billion dollar idea there!!

Honestly I think this technology is best suited for electric busses where they have to be running continuously for hours on end, and where time saving is even more important. Plus being able to easily remove a defective battery and swap in a new one will save a lot of time and money for everyone.

my primary concern about this is that I'm generally sceptical about the "everything as a service" future we're heading towards. this is, undoubtedly, more convenient but particularly when it comes to something like your main mode of transport, I worry that needing to rely on the continuation of a related service to continue using a product that you own outright doesn't offer people sufficient stability

For the people wondering , this swapping station is in the netherlands, i guess near Utrecht . It takes about 5 minutes to swap a battery and costs around 13 euro ( 15 dollars )

What I find to be really brilliant, is that for everyday use, you could use a smaller and lighter battery that can do perhaps 200 km on a charge, and then when you need to go on long trips, you swap to a bigger and heavier battery that can do 500 km on a charge. That way, you save the weight when you don't really need it.

I have said this for years, the advantages are not just that the batteries can be swapped in a couple of minutes but it means the batteries can be charged slowly, stored and looked after by the company owning the batteries meaning each battery will last allot longer and it future proofs electric vehicles, as new battery technology comes out it is so easy to update the cars

I own Nio. Battery swap was the main reason I bought one (in China). There is one benefit that is not often mentioned. Nio offers 3 battery sizes you can choose when purchasing the vehicle. I opted the smallest one. Driving in city mostly, the range is more than enough. If I want to drive long distance, I can rent and swap the largest battery they have, do my driving, and return it in the destination. Very affordable solution since the renting for a day or two is not expensive. Also if they would come out with a new battery, you can have access to it and swap. From user point of view, this is all great. but... unless Nio partners with more brands to be able to build these stations at scale, the business model is not sustainable. There simply isn't enough Nio cars to justify building a huge network of these stations. I have 2 stations nearby where I live, but that is city. Outside of large cities, there's nothing.

They should have just designed cars with AA batteries and let us swap them ourselves

Wow great! Nio nailed it!! Hope this technology gets to the US soon!

My parents own a renault EV which had a partnership with a similar company. They had easy to swap batteries which could be swapped by a carwash like building. Then the company went bankrupt and because the car was not very popular, there is almost no homebrew solutions to swapping the battery out by yourself

The problem with battery swap isn’t the tech, it’s the business model

My college professor back in 2009 was a consultant on such a business plan. He used it in instruction about emerging technology & infrastructure. I was always surprised year-after-year why I hadn't heard about such a business. Nice to see it finally taking hold.

No way! My late grandad had an idea similar to this three or four years ago (he didn't mention robots though, just the charging and swapping bit as a charging time solution)! I wasn't sure how it would be done when I heard his idea. I bet he'd be thrilled to know this is actually a thing!

One additional advantage of this approach I haven’t heard anyone mentioning is that, by changing the batteries at slower speeds, you are also increasing the longevity of the batteries, especially if you limit how much of the battery you actually fill to and stop discharging at

Robot: Park here, please. Tom: (lifts hand nervously as car parks itself) Robot (condescendingly, may I add): good boy!

20 years ago i assumed this is how every electric vehicle would be

YES! we need lots of these really smart swapping stations but of cause for many different battery types. Great idea.