Nio tried this in Denmark, and it failed pretty quickly. There are a number of issues, and the first has already been detailed above - no one wants to get a heavily worn battery in their new car when they swap.

That can be fixed if you do not own the battery, but rent it instead. In that case a lower performance may be a nuisance, but not a financial burden.

However, what happens if you want to sell the car, and the potential new owner lives far away from a swapping station? Still rent the battery for a signifikant monthly fee, even if you never or rarely get to use the swapping feature? We hade ONE swapping station in Denmark, so...

Also, the Nio models that were on sale here in Denmark had pretty slow fast charging, so driving your car on vacation in countries without swapping stations was less than ideal, compared to a car with a fixed battery.

Considering that the latest batteries from both CATL and BYD have sub-10 minutes charging times on sufficiently capable fast chargers, I don't see battery swapping going anywhere - it was a stop-gap measure while battery charging was comparably slow. Now? - a solution looking for a problem that has already been solved.

it's something that needs to be planned around, it is an irritation certainly. however, it's an irritation I am happy to have for a car that is better in every other way.

Besides, on longer trips you try to only charge what’s needed, no use in arriving with more than a few percent in your battery

@mihamarkic @rubbel @joacim @randahl

why not both?

the battery swap just for long drives/ time sensitive/ people who live where they can't charge easily

otherwise, you can swap batteries, and charge from home

Which means workplaces like INCO (now Vale) in Sudbury that have outlets for block heaters in the winter can allow their use for slow EV charging all year round.

This stuff is patented (see https://patents.google.com/patent/US12187155B2/en and https://patents.google.com/patent/US8164300B2/en?oq=US8164300B2) but there are others as well. Tesla refused to license the patent(s) and so for the initial growth of EVs this wouldn't happen. In China they are more competitive and this area has recently seen a lot of innovation.

That said, there’s a huge misunderstanding about how to make EVs convenient. People need to stop thinking of EVs as cars that fill slowly, and understand that they are cars that fill up passively. Anytime in EV is parked it can charge. THAT is the real convenience. These are cars that can use a regular outlet to just be full ALWAYS.

correct, zero will now

but the kind of thing that could grow some will

This is especially useful for electric scooters with little batteries you can just pop in and out.

Eg https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/

You can set up the chargers with their own solar panels too.

right but there's blame placing, and solving the problem

i am not saying we should not seek justice

but i am saying we should not stand in the way of solving the problem in our desire for justice

we should do both

solve the problem, and apportion proper blame

there's a new thing in #China where you drive up, a machine swaps out your dead batteries for fresh ones, and on you drive

less time than it takes to fill your car up with gas at a pump

kind of like how we swap empty for full propane tanks for our backyard grill

this could be the way forward

it even saves gas stations from extinction

range and charging time/ availability is the big problem with #EV

this idea solves that problem

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/18/nx-s1-5788990/ev-battery-charge-long-china-nio

I'm just a little excited about the possibilities of the fossil car to e-bike transition
@joacim @randahl

Canada … 11.2%

This *is* an important point… every place that a car can be parked for a length of time should be capable of slow charging that car, because mostly cars just sit and slow charging is the most energy and cost efficient way to charge them.