Could battery swapping eliminate concern for battery degradation?

[stuart22]

Unless batteries get a whole lot cheaper and lighter, I'm expecting to see the EREV evolve as the major player -

I totally agree that EREV is the way forward. BEVs never could catch on with the masses for long known reasons - short range and long recharging times - but there has always been a small contingent of EVbelievers whose commitment to the cause enables them to live and deal with the issues.

However, the believers did not seem to be ready for another issue to be exposed - battery degradation - which has shaken things up in the tight little LEAF community. Those who bought their LEAFs and are experiencing the worst of it are now having to add to the list of concerns the sobering issue of shrinking range. I wonder how many now are regretting passing up on getting a Volt in favor of a full electric.

Battery swapping would eliminate this cancer-like concern and return the believers back to concerns they've already committed themselves to overcoming.

I guess this has just been a 'what if' session for me, finding an answer to this latest concern LEAFers are dealing with. Back to reality - which for me the belief that pure BEVs are cool but are dead ends going nowhere; EREVs are what will pave the way towards EV success.

[DonC]

The market would "not" be broken.

Of course it would be broken. The used car market is broken for heavens sake, and this is a lot worse than a used car market. Here not only is the information asymmetric, which is the problem with the used car market, but the cost of trading in a bad battery is zero. Of course you'd be most likely to get another bad battery, which you'd immediately trade in again in the hopes of getting a better one. Rather than Better Place we could call it Better One.

[baragona]

The only good thing this does is transfer the risk to the company. Degradation will happen just as often, and you'll have the minimum acceptance discussion mentioned by others. Along the way, you have to keep a bunch of extra battery on hand to be able to swap them at each location. Additionally, you limit both car and battery designs , preventing either from taking full advantage of future innovations.

Suppose there's an amazing new battery out there, twice the range for half the weight - but it needs to be water cooled (or needs a steady air supply, or has to be kept at high temperatures.) If the car's interface can't handle it, you can't upgrade - and your large supply (probably twice as many as there are cars) of expensive batteries becomes obsolete and an expensive loss to the company.

If you don't choose your battery design and interface carefully, you end up locked into one shape of car (they probably can't make a minivan or station wagon out of the Better Place system because the batteries are in a tall trunk orientation from the videos I've seen.) You can't build a cheaper model with less range, or a supersports car with massive power output - neither can use you standardized battery.

As an engineer, I appreciate standards and commonality. But I've also seen far to much expense and waste that resulted from inappropriately chosen interfaces and trying to keep interfaces consistent. Sometimes you have to - but in this case, there's no market case for it.

Unless batteries get a whole lot cheaper and lighter, I'm expecting to see the EREV evolve as the major player - engines becoming more specialized until they eventually get replaced with something else, possibly fuel cells or reactors, but still basically the same idea - battery to stabilize load requirements and handle short distances, but something with more energy density to handle long distance commutes. I'd love to have Jaguar's notional grand touring with jet turbine multifuel range extenders and 800HP in individual wheel motors (C-X75.)

This a very good point. The model does depend on battery standardization, at least in terms of size, shape and how the battery is removed and replaced.

The interaction between the car and the battery is very touchy. You can't mess with it too much by having too many different batteries.

The model also could have issues with advancements in battery technology.......

[mws1047]

Some questioning here of the Better Place business model. Carlos Ghosn did the same in 'Revenge of the Electric Car'.

However, there may be an operational model where this battery swap system makes sense.

Recently a battery electric GM Holden Commodore modified by EV Engineering completed 1886km in 24 hours using this Better Place architecture. The Commodore is a large/full size car, the basis of the future Chev SS. EV Engineering indicate that the energy operating cost is 2c/km whereas for a petrol powered car it's about 15c/km. They like the idea of not just city travelling, but indicating that long distance trips are viable.

http://www.goauto.com.au/mellor/mell...257A4400241285

http://media.theage.drive.com.au/car...e-3467809.html

http://www.evengineering.com.au/news-media/

Buying a car without a battery, like a Renault Fluence Z.E., where the use of a battery is sold as service seems uncomfortable. I say this as I've listened closely to a presentation given in person by Shaun Agassi who made the argument seem so reasonable (no different from the commitment to buy normal fuel at a future unknown increasing price), if one can get over the paradigm hurdle.

Cost effective electric powered cars are normally not a goer for large cars - the battery is just too expensive (except for Tesla's target market for premium cars).

A potential market segment for the Better Place architecture is the taxi cab market. London has its special purpose vehicles. In Australia the taxi market is dominated by locally made large cars (one model being dominant), usually modified to use LPG which probably reduces the energy cost by 1/2 at this time (for a very small CO2 reduction). A very few hybrids are appearing (Prius, Civic, Camry). A taxi licence is worth about $0.5 million per car. Charging your taxi fare to a credit card has a 10% impost. Notably the capital cost of the car itself is small compared with other cost inputs.

Relative to the taxi licence cost (government set) and other industry costs, a BEV modified taxi using the Better Place architecture might not have an un competitive economic operating cost. The capital cost is largely in the hands of Government policy.

[saghost]

instead of a battery swap, why not just a universal extended "trailered" battery? you just pull into a regular interstate gas station, hitch up a trailer with a 70kWh 200 mile battery, plug it in to your BEV or EREV, and go. 200 miles down the road you pull into another station and swap trailers and pay to have the first trailer recharged. When you get near your destination, drop off the trailer.

the EV trailers would be fitted with an onboard 240V 100A charger so that just about every existing gas station / uhaul dealer can host them and recharge them on their standard electrical service. the EV trailers would also be fitted with a radio so that the network can always know the location and charge state of every available trailer.

the same electrical connection and trailer hookup could also support a number of alternative or conventionally fueled range extenders. Why carry around your range extender 100% of the time when you only need it occasionally.

I haven't seen anyone talking about a pure battery trailer - the big problems with that being how you integrate it with the car's onboard battery, and of course the poor energy density/high weight and cost of a battery trailer.

A range extending trailer has been suggested before. During the late '90s EV boom, Toyota even had someone develop one, based on a motorcycle engine:

http://www.evnut.com/rav_longranger.htm

(AC Propulsion made a number of conversion cars, and provided their technology to Tesla for the Roadster.)

There's also a Leaf owner who built his own turbine propane fed version:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6847

[agggilli]

I guarantee you that Better Place factors into the cost model that a certain number of batteries will degrade over time and that some of the batteries coming back in will not be good enough to put back into service.

The market would "not" be broken. Better Place becomes the responsible party for policing bad batteries. When a bad battery comes in, Better Place simply recycles it.



To do anything else would be unthinkable.....

In a perfect world this might be the case. In the real world businesses are in it to make money. Batteries will be used until there is nothing left, before they recycle them. Putting new batteries or recycled batteries into the mix costs money, money that takes away from profits, that's the reality. The likelyhood of getting a battery worse than what someone already has is probably pretty high. I'm glad I went with my Volt.

[Henry_FL]

According to Reuters, business analysis and research firm McKinsey and Company have just released a report suggesting that the cost of an electric car battery, specifically the lithium-ion battery cells which make up the battery pack of an EV, will drop in coming years. McKinsey and Company found 40 different factors that would affect the cost. The three most important influences were the economy of scale, a decrease in the cost of components and improved battery capacity.

This is a BOT account ... here is the source and its been posted and deleted on other forums

http://www.cardealexpert.com/news-in...c-car-battery/

[mikeg3]

Unless batteries get a whole lot cheaper and lighter, I'm expecting to see the EREV evolve as the major player

I saw lot of EV's at a trade show last week and the Volt was the only EREV, concept or production.

Obviously, the builders with billions are betting on better batteries before being EREVed.

[adric22]

I've never seen a battery swap program that I liked. There are several inherent difficulties in the concept behind a battery swap system. First some small points, before I get to the huge problem.

• You never know the quality of the battery you end up with. Did somebody abuse that battery?
• Who eats the cost of the batteries that no longer perform adequatly?
• This would tend to force or at least encourage all auto-makers to use the same size battery. This would hurt innovation. We still haven't figured out what size battery the public really wants and maybe there is no set size. Different sizes for different applications. Also stifles innovation in changing chemistries that are incompatible with different cars.
• Also stifles innovation as to the placement of the battery. Cars will be designed around the battery instead of designing the battery around the car.

OK. Now for the big issue. Lets think about the cost of a charging station. Typically costs a few thousand to install. If you managed to pull off 8 hours of usage per day, charging $1 per hour, you could pull in $2,920 in revenue per year. Or, over 10 years that would be $29,200. That would easily pay for the install, the electricity, and the charger, and there would be some good profit in there.

Now lets talk about a battery swap station. What do you need?

• $100,000 worth of property.
• $1,000,000 worth of equipment for swapping batteries.
• about $100,000 worth of spare batteries on hand (probably a dozen or so)
• $50,000 per year to deal with all of the crappy batteries people will drop off that can't be used anymore and will need replacing.
• Probably need at least one employee. $30,000 per year?
• Probably need regular maintenance and repair on specialized equipment.

Now that you have your swap station. Lets figure out how much the station would need to charge per swap in order to stay in business. Under current market conditions I'm going to just throw out a guess that each swap will cost more than the entire vehicle is worth. Maybe $50,000. Which means really that nobody would use the service, in which case they would go bankrupt pretty quick.

But lets say market conditions existed that they could accomplish 100 swaps per day. That would bring the costs down to, what, $1,000 per swap? Gasoline is still looking pretty good at this point.

Here's my opinion. For people who really think battery swap is the way to go, I have an alternative idea that works on a similar setup but would be much more likely to succeed financially. Swap the entire car. You drive up to a station every 100 miles or so down the highway, and there are several EV's lined up fully charged waiting for you to switch to it. I know, it sounds silly. But I think it would be more economically viable than battery swapping.