Why Are Electric Vehicles With Swappable Batteries Unpopular?

Given that the most expensive part of an electric vehicle is its battery pack, several manufacturers have worked to develop a supply chain with their raw material suppliers to create cost-effective and usable battery swapping technology for motorists.

Despite over a century of effort, however, none of these initiatives has been particularly successful, despite widespread and long-standing concerns about range anxiety that persist in spite of contradicting data.

The most recent attempt, the Silence S04, attempts to bridge the gap with two swappable batteries designed to be easy to charge indoors or be swapped out without a dedicated swap station.

The swappable version is sold for significantly cheaper than the standard version, with a €20 per month subscription to use a range of exchange stations.

Why have swappable EV batteries historically struggled? Why do they have such potential? And what is the missing link to their success?

 

What Are Swappable Battery EVs?

A swappable battery EV is any electric vehicle where the battery is designed in such a way that it can be easily taken out and replaced with a new one. Sometimes this is a manual process, but in other cases it can be done automatically in a matter of minutes.

Swappable battery EVs tend to operate using a subscription or lease system, where a driver buys a car without a battery and then leases one from the manufacturer or a licensed organisation to power the car.

These systems are not entirely new; London Electrobus used the same technology in 1906, and a handful of EV companies in the United States also had similar battery swapping systems in the age of lead-acid batteries.

 

Why Use Swappable Batteries For EVs?

The big concerns for many drivers considering an EV are cost, range anxiety and battery degradation, and swappable batteries have been advertised as a solution to all three issues.

Because you do not buy the battery, EVs can be sold for a considerably lower cost, and the lack of battery degradation means that whenever a battery is swapped at an exchange station, it will be fully charged and provide the maximum range possible.

Whilst swap times vary, Chinese luxury EV manufacturer Nio claims that they can automatically swap batteries in 144 seconds, which is less than half the time of a typical petrol refuelling session, and a tenth of the time of a typical EV charging session.

 

Why Are Swappable EV Batteries Unpopular?

With all of these advantages, it is interesting that swappable EV batteries have been rather infamously unpopular, due to a combination of a poor launch, lack of standardisation and one highly notable failure.

The fundamental problem is the one plaguing EVs more broadly for many years; there is an inherent reliance on an infrastructure system that is a necessity for drivers.

It is a problem that EVs have struggled with for years and one that is only recently changing thanks to concerted standardisation and subsidised construction efforts.

With swappable battery EVs, the standardisation issue is even greater and requires every manufacturer to be on the same page.

 

Better Place And The Failure Of The Renault Fluence

The most impactful recent failure was the company Better Place, a battery-swapping startup that partnered with Renault to create the Fluence ZE, a 2011 battery-swapping prototype that was meant to prove the principle and concept before rolling out other models.

Better Place was extremely aggressive with this approach, developing an automated system which swapped batteries in less than a minute, and building 21 swap stations with plans for almost 60 more in Israel and Denmark.

The technology was highly impressive, and Better Place was planning to deploy as many as 100,000 EVs using their QuickDrop technology. In reality, just 1400 ended up on the road, primarily used as fleet vehicles for commutes or taxi journeys.

This combination of an aggressive rollout and a reluctant car market caused Better Place to swiftly go bankrupt, which meant that the 1400 Fluence owners technically had cars fitted with batteries they did not own.

 

What Is Needed To Make Battery Swapping A Success?

Petrol stations and EV charging stations are successful because almost any vehicle can use them; there is a pump with your choice of fuel, and most EV charging stations will work with your car, even if you may not get the fastest possible charging speeds.

Whilst you can charge a swappable battery EV anywhere, many have the issue of non-standard swapping technology, meaning that your options for changing the battery are limited and your EV buying decision is based as much on geography as the car itself.

This needs to be fixed, ideally through ways to charge batteries at home, as well as significant price incentives to make a battery-swappable version worth buying over a conventional EV.