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Personal Finance Topics / Macroeconomic Trends and Risks❤
No. of Recommendations: 5
At a Nio battery-swapping station near Shanghai’s Huangpu river, it takes only a brief voice command to start an automated process that will power up the electric vehicle in just three minutes.
Steering itself, the car halts above a retractable metal floor, before robotic arms remove its undercarriage and swap its depleted battery for a fully charged one. With a few hardware and software checks, the vehicle is ready for the road — and the next can swing into the station.
Nio, a US-listed Chinese EV start-up, runs more than 3,000 such stations in China. Its embrace of the technology has made it an outlier among its peers because most other manufacturers rely on recharging technology.
From an FT article subscription required to read.
No. of Recommendations: 0
I dropped into their showroom in Oslo a couple of years ago and it's pretty clever. It's an annual subscription for battery swap if you don't feel inclined to charge the car at a station. They had a number of concept cars on display which looked pretty exotic.
Jeff
No. of Recommendations: 3
Nio, a US-listed Chinese EV start-up, runs more than 3,000 such stations in China. Its embrace of the technology has made it an outlier among its peers because most other manufacturers rely on recharging technology.
At first I thought this was a pretty good idea, but then realized that every car model would have to be designed and manufactured to work with *their* equipment, or it doesn’t work at all. Now that may have some appeal to certain manufacturers, but isn’t it a lot easier to have a standard plug and recharge any model that comes down the pike?
Some models will take more charge, some less. Some will be faster and some will be slower, but 100% will be serviceable. Imagine if gas stations could only fill Ford cars, or you had to go to a different one for a Volvo or a Toyota. It would be weird, less convenient, and likely more expensive. Instead we have a standard for gas (well, 3 or 4, actually, but all fro the same pump) and any ICE car can pull into any station and fill up.
EVs, as they are currently built, have different size and shape battery packs. Different ranges. And likely different systems for putting in and taking out. Give it 10 years and there will another 200 variants.
Seems more logical to have a standard plug, even if it takes a bit longer to fill.
No. of Recommendations: 2
The quick-change battery scheme is not an altruistic gift to mankind, but rather a marketing ploy to allow their customers to quickly/painlessly "get a charge" while those of other companies have to sit and wait while their batteries get changed.
Jeff
No. of Recommendations: 1
At first I thought this was a pretty good idea, but then realized that every car model would have to be designed and manufactured to work with *their* equipment, or it doesn’t work at all. Now that may have some appeal to certain manufacturers, but isn’t it a lot easier to have a standard plug and recharge any model that comes down the pike?
Goofy,
Digital equipment is not designed to exclude options.
Odds are the additional plugin option.
No. of Recommendations: 3
I watched a video of the process and it is quite impressive. And it's completely automatic, no humans in the loop.
But as a guy that worked at a garage, I wonder how it will work when the bolts are old and corroded, connectors are getting loose and floppy and years of rain and road sludge have had time to do their work.
