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Chinese EV maker BYD says new fast-charging system could be as quick as filling up a tank
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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how fast would it cause the battery to degrade, though?
That's the beauty of it. Just get a new one every two years like every other electronic device and you won't need to worry about that. Subscription plans will be available.
ugh, i fear cars will turn into smartphones. its gonna suuuuuuuuuuuuuck
I wish the batteries were modular/interchangeable. You could just pull into a station, remove the spent battery and replace it with a full one, the spent one can then just get recharged and stored at the station for the next user to change out. You could even bring some extra ones in the trunk for a long trip!
some of them are if you are willing to take it apart and replace the individual cells.
The problem is the form factor. They're broad, flat batteries under the floor of the car, because that's the most available space when you take out the drivetrain. If you wanted to make them swappable, you'd have to sacrifice the space under the hood or the trunk. Or the passenger space. And all that comes with their own safety concerns.
They can drop the battery out from underneath…. You’re not seriously suggesting that this would be done by users and not automatically? The easiest place for this would be exactly where it is now, underneath EVERYTHING.
It’s not like you are gonna man handle the battery yourself in and out of these dude.
The precedence is there, there’s scooters that already utilize this exact exchanging. Hell forklifts figured this out decades ago… and you want to make it sound like it would be an issue in todays age? Semis have used it for years too, why do you think they would go back to manually doing it? Even if the batteries were light enough to move by hand, you would spend more time unplugging and plugging them back in than it would be to charge them….
That's been suggested, the problem is that that requires additional infrastructure, either digging a pit for the battery to be lowered into via elevator, or raising the car in such a way they still have access to the pack.
Former is more likely but digging pits like at oil changes is not cheap either.
Mostly it's a chicken-egg scenario: nobody will make the facilities until there are cars to use it... And the other way.
… where do you think the battery’s would be stored and charged…? Either on a structure above ground, so drive up on it, or underground and it would already be excavated…
The extra infrastructure would be there for the changing and charging already, adding the lift or hole is moot and a fraction additional cost.
And forklifts figured this out well over 5 decades ago this isn’t some engineering unicorn that they need to figure out from the ground up. The techs all over the place already.
There is a company that does this in China. You lease the battery, and pay roughly the same amount as a tank of fuel to swap it, so not a cheap process, and it only works on a small number of vehicles. They're also losing money hand over fist, and aren't likely to last very long.
Also, a long trip is precisely when I need all my trunk space.
Yeah, I've thought about this too, but real use cases would be rare and maybe somewhere along highways for long trips, but you'd need a lot of stations in hard to predict locations to make it something people could use. Most of the time a simple recharge at night at the domicile would suffice. Add trying to get battery form factors standardized when companies can't even agree on a universal charger and challenges to upgrading vehicle frames and design if such a standard was ever adopted and it just seems unsustainable.
Ya Engineering really is 't my thing but it seams like such a logical way to do things. This would even be great with phones if you could just swap out the battery you're not currently using.
I have a Chinese flashlight and the battery trademark is so unfortunate (soonfire) like WTF. Lol.
That dying batteries last goal is to provide you with light. How inspiring.
And heat and depression treatment! (Lithium)
Not necessarily as they are using LFP chemistry which has much more cycles than the standard one.