Battery swapping is a technology that could solve one key barrier for EV adoption: consumers’ range anxiety and the long waiting time for battery charging. Wouldn’t you feel more assured on a weekend trip if you knew you could stop at a swap station and replace depleted battery packs with fully charged ones in five minutes? But this isn’t easy to do, as Tesla and Better Place’s past failures. In China, however, battery swapping has been a reality for a couple of years. How did Chinese companies like Nio make it work with 2,300 swapping stations nationwide? What can companies outside China learn from the Chinese experience?
  • DevCat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    5 months ago

    When a driver enters their automated station, the station will connect directly to the vehicle, drive and park it at the platform, have the depleted battery be dropped out from the bottom of the vehicle and replaced it with a fully charged battery while charging the user’s account — all within three minutes. The driver doesn’t even need to control or step out of the car.

    It’s a good example of what you can do when you have, essentially, a captive market.

  • DevCat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    5 months ago

    While western companies often focus primarily on technological innovations, Chinese EV firms including Nio keep consumers’ needs at the central of their strategy to create a competitive edge among fierce domestic competitions.

    Wow! Look what happens when one company doesn’t own an almost monopoly.