I thought this was such a cool idea when I first read about it … in 2014. Quite a few manufacturers have done trials and decided it wasn’t practical, so I don’t see how this is any different.

Now we’re at the point where batteries last longer than most people own vehicles, supercharger networks are widespread and expanding rapidly, charging is faster than ever, and we have Toyota’s fud promising 10 minute charging. We also have improved construction methods with batteries incorporated into the structure of vehicles rather than bolted on, on one end.

Swappable batteries fly in the face of this: we’d have to give up too much, and it assumes cooperation from all manufacturers and a huge infrastructure buildout that will just never happen. We’re well past the point of this looking like a good idea.

Let me throw this in the bin with the hydrogen fans, although there’s a place for that where batteries won’t scale. People keep complaining it is so difficult, time consuming, costly, to build out a better power grid for renewables and BEV, when it’s just adding flexibility and capacity to a system that’s already there and well understood. Yet you yahoos think it will somehow be faster and cheaper to invent an entirely new infrastructure, create agreement among many manufacturers worldwide, create new industries, and scale it out worldwide? What the everliving fuck?