Will battery swapping replace fast charging for electric vehicles?

9

October

2022

4.5/5 (2)

While popular carmakers producing electric vehicles (EV) such as Nissan, Tesla or BMW are focusing on how customers can charge their cars in a faster and more seamless way, new entrants in the market are pushing another method to give EV their charge. Founded in 2014 in Shanghai, China, NIO is a car manufacturer specialising in EV (Wikipedia, 2022). Nio is known for developing an alternative to the charging stations: the swapping stations. In December 2021, NIO had more than 700 swapping stations throughout China, which provided more than 5,3 million battery swaps in total (NIO, 2021). The principle of these stations is simple: when an NIO owner arrives at the station, the car parks itself on the swapping location, the battery is swapped within 3 minutes and the driver does not have to come out of the car during the whole process. The business model behind this technology was named by NIO as “Battery as a service”. The car can be bought without a battery, leading to a cost reduction of around 10.000 USD. The customer can then pay per swap or take a subscription that will include a certain number of swaps in a month.

But is this technology better than the existing fast-charging possibilities?

Battery swapping comes with advantages, but also a set of drawbacks.
First of all, the main advantage of this technology is the waiting time for the user. While a full charge for a Tesla at a Tesla Supercharger takes around 25 to 30 minutes (Cline, 2022), a battery swap usually takes between 3 and 5 minutes. A report by McKinsey showed that the waiting time for the charging process was one of the barriers to the adoption of EVs (Heineke et al., 2020). Additionally, this short time required for swapping a battery allows for more efficiency, which would be ideal in congested areas. The second advantage is economic. In swap stations, batteries can be charged when the cost of electricity is lower, making it more cost-efficient. Thirdly, this service can enable easy battery upgrades when a more advanced battery is available. This can help preserve the car’s performance, but also resale value.
On the other hand, battery swapping brings the problem of battery standardization. Not all batteries are the same size, and not all carmakers are willing to standardize their battery size among their models. Moreover, always having charged batteries at the swapping stations require the manufacturers to produce far more batteries than cars, increasing the pressure on the finite supply of resources required for their production.

To conclude, it is still unclear whether battery swapping can achieve better economical, ecological, and practical performance than fast charging. Both methods have great opportunities, but they both require important development. As the BaaS model is increasingly important in China, it will be interesting to follow its performance closely, to understand where and how the swapping stations can play a role in the new EV charging network. It is easy to imagine a coexistence of these two systems, where battery swapping could benefit professional usage, and where charging stations would be used for the regular commute.

References:

Cline, A. (2022, July 22). How Long Does It Take to Charge a Tesla at a Charging Station? MotorBiscuit. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://www.motorbiscuit.com/how-long-does-take-charge-a-tesla-charging-station/

Heineke, K., Holland-Letz, D., Kässer, M., Kloss, B., & Müller, T. (2020). ACES 2019 survey: Can established auto manufacturers meet customer expectations for ACES?

NIO. (2021, December 10). NIO Achieves Annual Target of 700 Battery Swap Stations Ahead of Schedule | NIO. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://www.nio.com/news/nio-achieves-annual-target-700-battery-swap-stations-ahead-schedule?noredirect=

Wikipedia. (2022, October 9). NIO (car company). Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIO_(car_company)

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What´s up automotive industry?

10

September

2019

5/5 (3) The automotive industry is currently in a vast turmoil, thus nobody is able to predict the future as well as to forecast which technologies will have the biggest impact on the automotive industry. Nevertheless, it’s inevitable that a technological wave is disrupting the industry and car companies are forced to react (Blackman, 2019). Besides providing a brief glance on the most impactful changes in the automotive industry, I would like foster a vital discussion, asking for your opinion on the most important technologies and the future of the automotive industry.

First, passing by the technology of electrified cars is impossible when analyzing the current automotive industry. It is more than just it`s propulsion technology but rather a step towards cleaner roadways and carbon reduced emissions. Therefore, it comes by no surprise that sales of electric cars are peaking at around 5.1 million cars in 2018 (IEA, 2019) , while being at around 200 000 in 2013 (Kane, 2016). Moreover the rise of importance is underlined by the fact that electric vehicles will amount up to 35% of all global new car sales by 2040 (Bannon, 2016). Secondly, the invention of vehicles that are not in need of any human intervention is called autonomous driving. To my mind the impact for the future of the automotive industry are tremendous as the list of advantages are endless. For example, traffic death could be reduced by around 90% or 60% less carbon emissions due to reasons as decreased traffic congestions and increased efficiency of fuel use (Goldin, 2019). Last but not least, the interconnectivity between cars and/ or with traffic infrastructure could create increased revenues, reduced costs, boosted safety and create value opportunities of around 750$ billion until the year 2030 (Bertoncello, Husain and Möller, 2018). Furthermore, advantages are seen in time-saving and increased productivity as accident alerts, traffic conditions and live route optimisation including shorter routes are available (Fernandez, n.d.). Additionally, interconnected cars increase the safety standard as they are able to communicate with road infrastructure or other cars. Therefore, there are forecasts which predict that there will be 380 million connected cars by 2021 and a new ecosystem in the automotive industry. Wait … a new ecosystem?

Of course, electrification, autonomous driving and interconnectivity are shaping the car industry as just a few technologies ever did before. But are those the most impactful changes to the automotive industry? To my mind those technologies are “only” the enhancers for something that is bigger than those technologies – a new ecosystem in the automotive industry which is boosted by interconnection, automation, electrification and smart algorithms. It´s not about selling cars anymore, but rather about cooperating with new partners in order to deliver the best, most convenient and sustainable mobility service for a new generation of high demanding customers. What are your thoughts – are those really the most important technologies at the moment? And are the technologies just the enhancers for the new ecosystem or is the new ecosystem just an overrated buzzword?

References:

Bannon, E. (2016). E-vehicles to be 35% of sales by 2040 thanks to falling battery prices | Transport & Environment. [online] Transportenvironment.org. Available at: https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/e-vehicles-be-35-sales-2040-thanks-falling-battery-prices [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

Bertoncello, M., Husain, A. and Möller, T. (2018). Setting the framework for car connectivity and user experience. [online] McKinsey & Company. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/setting-the-framework-for-car-connectivity-and-user-experience [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

Fernandez, T. (n.d.). 6 Key Benefits of Adopting Connected Car Technology | Autotrip. [online] Autotrip. Available at: https://autotrip.com/connected-car-technology-benefits/ [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

Goldin, P. (2018). 10 Advantages of Autonomous Vehicles | ITSdigest. [online] Itsdigest.com. Available at: https://www.itsdigest.com/10-advantages-autonomous-vehicles [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

IEA (2019). Global EV Outlook 2019. [online] Available at: https://www.iea.org/publications/reports/globalevoutlook2019/ [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

Kane, M. (2019). Plug-In Electric Car Sales Visualized From 2011 to 2015. [online] InsideEVs. Available at: https://insideevs.com/news/329358/plug-in-electric-car-sales-visualized-from-2011-to-2015/ [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

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Technology of the Week – Make Electric Cars Great Again

22

September

2017

Transportation has had many evolutions throughout the years. Firstly, the boat was invented to cross water, horses were domesticated soon after and it all was crowned by the invention of the wheel. Later on the steam engine enabled the invention of automobiles. All those have been further developed into variants we use today. Currently, the car manufacturing industry has been disrupted by a specific type of car: the electric car.

Electric cars are nothing new. The first electric car was developed in 1884, and in 1900 it was the most popular type of car. After the mass production of gasoline cars, the popularity plummeted. More electric models have been produced throughout the 1900’s, but these were never successful. The Toyota Prius however sparked the interest in fuel-efficient cars in the 2000’s. Sales of electric cars have greatly increased in the past years, which goes hand in hand with the launch of successful models such as the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Model S. Researchers believe that the total cost of ownership of electric cars will fall below that of combustion engine cars in 2022, potentially accelerating sales even further.

Power Grid

The increase of electric cars and charging stations has impact on the power grid. In 2020, there will be 13 times more charging stations then in 2014 and in a matter of time gas stations will be outnumbered by charging stations. The use of electric cars influences the performance, efficiency and required capacity of the electric grid. Therefore, it’s not possible to deploy an unlimited amount of electric cars, without modifying the existing power grid.

Stakeholders

The growth in sales of electric vehicles affects many stakeholders. Many countries across the world subsidize the purchase of electric cars and some countries go even further by banning fossil fueled cars within 5-15 years. The shift in consumer behavior forces car manufacturers to include electric options in their assortment.

Battery

Lithium-ion batteries are the most commonly used batteries in modern electric cars and draw the most development funds.

One of the biggest hurdles for electric car sales is “range anxiety”, the fear that your car will go out of energy before you are able to reach your target, an exaggerated fear though: 87% of vehicles in the USA could be replaced by a low cost electric car with only overnight charging needed.

Modern Lithium-ion batteries for car use have a lifetime of about 1000 recharging cycles, meaning that the car life exceeds the battery life, however several manufacturers are giving out warranties for batteries to combat customers fears. Recycling lithium-ion batteries is difficult, so most end up in trash dumps currently; however several companies are committed to increase recycling rates of lithium-ion batteries.

SWOT

Created by Group 9. 5/5 (1)

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