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!

I can’t wait to get a defective battery set

Ice ice, baby!

Corrosion entered the chat

Why not just change the whole car, that's faster and cheaper.

This way you don't need to worry about battery degradation and making expensive battery replacement after 5-10 year. And if the battery technology gets more advanced, and if the charger station detects that the battery reached its end of life, can just pull it out and "requests" disposal, and maybe they can introduce more advanced but still compatible replacement batteries.

Nio's battery swapping is so unbelievably stupid and overengineered. It's literally beyond unprofitable with zero avenues to profitability and the reason why the company is tanking. Just to clarify - battery swapping has always been the intelligent tech - this has been discussed since at least like 2005 or 06, but Nio is not the answer at all.

I do not have to charge my car either, refill 60 liters of diesel takes ~2 minutes and lasts for ~1000 km 😂

Wow.. are we already in the future yet?

Seems like an expensive solution to a non-problem, just stick with diesel.

I'm surprised the man who knows more about manufacturing than anybody alive today hasn't invented this already.

I can see something like this being good for big cities where refueling quickly is a necessity but otherwise this feels really extra

Nice to see someone finally putting the work in and bringing this technology to market. Another upside of this beyond the convenience factor is that batteries wear down quicker than anything else on an EV so you can potentially buy a new battery if you aren't subscribed to the service and have that machine install it for you and safely store the old one for recycling. Or if you regularly use the service you don't have to worry about the battery wearing down over its lifetime because the machine tracks that for you and presumably doesn't install batteries worn down too far.

Keep in mind that this was originally what Tesla's plan was going to be for battery packs, but they moved away from it just due to the high cost of building the stations.

This is definitely a very good technology with a lot of upsides, but the unfortunate downside is that it requires a very significant upfront investment to build these swap stations. While they may need less power hookups than a regular charging setup, there is much more involved in the construction and permitting of something like this.

The end of petrol stations? ⛽️

And who invented and developed this revolutionary battery swapping technology?
Yes, it were the Dutch.
Who else.
Clever little bastards.

Very cool, but no thanks since it supports the CCP.

a single EV battery is already a severe fire/explosion risk, storing thousands of them in a huge warehouse is a recipe for complete disaster.

Nice that you did it in the netherlands wich is where I live

battery as a service also does away with the problem of battery degrading and lowering the cars resale value, as the battery is either something else you buy or just a part of the running costs of the car.

As long as the auto loader is kept as simple as possible and both it and the cars are clean and dry (good luck there) when they go onto the autoloader then there shouldn't be any major issues. They may need to modify or add a underbody cleaning process (jet wash and high pressure airjet drying) that the cars go through before battery change.

Did you notice they pinched the old Commodore Computers Logo (CK), but its face down (rotated 90').

It's a big shift from the 'traditional' way to purchase a car shifting to paying for the EV, then ALSO having to subscribe to a service like this as well (yes I realise it is optional). The only certaintity about the electrification of everything is that it will not be cheaper for customers. While the cost of fossil fuels is mostly hidden from us behind the price per L at the pump, the costs of owing an EV is going to be scrutinised and analysed to degrees and brought out into the open that petrol\diesel cars never have been. This unfortunately means a whole new way that cars need to be marketed and priced, and a whole new language consumers are expected to learn.

Many of us have been happy buying pricey cars because modern ones are relatively cheap to maintain and run. They're much, much more reliable than cars from even 20 years ago. We've been happy to spend $50K on a car, because of this and relatively low fuel costs. There will be a tipping point eventually where electric doesn't mean cheap, the running costs may even hit parity with fossil fuel costs as for all this talk of renewable energy being cheaper, it's not getting cheaper for consumers. Power bills keep going up.. Will the alternative need to be cheaper, boring cars to offset the higher running costs, if so, no EV maker has cracked that nut as they still want the profit margins they enjoy now on their ICE products.

I pity the EV salesperson trying to educate an older customer on what the hell KwH means and how it translates into running costs.

Just from experience, electric cars aren't near as much fun as combustion engine cars

I think this guy was doing this with Renault a decade ago. I remember seeing a video like this back then. Good to see he got it off the ground

You can put your hands down now Tom.

Aging Wheels did a video earlier this year about a trip with an electric car in the USA. Many of the car chargers in the USA don't work in some areas. From what I have heard the Tesla network of charging stations has a higher percentage of working charges. I do not have an electric car & I don't plan on getting one because where I live in a multi-dwelling unit, I don't have a way to have a charger. Plus, my current car is paid off & I don't want to go back into debt just to buy an electric car.

This is so close to my house! Saw the nio box a while back and was already wondering what it was.

Tesla advertised this YEARS ago, even did a demo of it on stage while having someone fill an ICE with fuel at a nearby gas station, but never brought it... This seriously should be the standard, have the option to swap batteries.

If this becomes standardized... This could be one big leap forward in EV. At the moment, charging times is slightly prohibitive to some people. But, if this sort of thing becomes standard across most, or all models of EV, then it could lead to a step forward in EV dominance over fossil fuels.

Yes, there is still the issues of batteries having a limited lifespan, and the fact that they use rare earth minerals to be made. But this could reduce the dangers of overcharging and risk of fires.

If 100% batterie gets you at least 500km these days and you can charge 50% in 10 Minutes I can't relate to anyone who says that's too long...

The backing into the place is stupid, drive through or nothing

Tesla opened a station demonstrating this back in 2015 and no one wanted it. Just another idea china stole and is trying to claim

A company called Electromobile opened in London in 1907, & their business model was to rent out electric cars to well-to-do Londoners. When the cars ran low on power, they were taken to the Electromobile Garage on Carrington Street in Mayfair, where the batteries would be changed for fresh ones.

all fun and games until your battery falls out while you're driving

I've been thinking about this for years.

Using EV batteries as storage for the grid itself, charging when theres overproducion or cheaper rates during low demand is so smart idk its not marketted more like that
Like renewables have a storage issue but if you just think of cars as energy storage devices it really flips it

You will own nothing and be happy.

"If charging is slow, why don't they just have battery swap stations?" - is a question I have been asking everyone for years - and now I see that they do!

I was wondering if this would be possible.. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thought of this!

Im still not convinced these electric cars are safer for the environment as a whole.

Isn't battery leasing going to lead to premature scrappage?
Imagine selling a 10 year old EV in which the battery is leased.
Who would buy a 10 year old car, that comes with the need to either buy or lease a battery?
People that buy older cars do so to avoid large outlays or monthly payments.
They'll just go to scrap, taking the imagined benefits with them.

This "solution" shows how the issues with electric vehicles are not superficial. That's not even talking about the environmental impact of making those massive lithium batteries.

Can't wait to have this in countries with snow and loskapaska on the bottom of the batteries...

I'll wait for the day I can pop open my car's trunk and replace that giant -AAAAAAA cylinder for another one bought at the dollar store.

How many different types of batteries for different types of cars do they plan on keeping? How many sq/km does the warehouse take up to house these batters at each swapping center? Is there enough land in the UK for such things? 😂

This is over before it began with high speed wireless charging of vehicles here in the next year or two.

Why do you wear lip gloss?

One big problem... the swapped battery may not be as viable as the battery being swapped. Over charging above 80% will diminish the capacity and performance of the battery. Nice in theory, but no thank you and avoid getting screwed with someone else's poor charging choice. 😉