I’m sure someone has discussed this elsewhere and forgive my technological naïveté, but I have always wondered about this and was hoping someone with more tech savvy could explain it to me.
So, obviously, with the shape and design of current Tesla EV batteries, this wouldn’t work, but why, in theory, is it impossible to have sort of EV battery “swapping” stations in place of destination chargers? The idea would be that, rather than owning your car battery, you have access to a system of stations where you could go when your battery is low and the station has a stock of fully charged batteries that are mechanically swapped by some automated process. They would then take your previous battery and charge it up to install in a future customer.
I realize that current EVs just aren’t designed this way, but is there any other practical reason this wouldn’t work? Tesla obviously has the best EV charging infrastructure right now, destination charging other EVs on any long trip requires massive research and time budgeting as they’re often full, broken or underpowered. This just seems like a much better solution to me and, as a bonus, it would allow for more routine battery maintenance by technicians who could service batteries that have problems quickly, making the whole system more reliable.
Other than the need for a universal standard across vehicles, can anyone explain to me the obstacles?
On a side note, for the technologically minded, is there anyway that, as a larger portion of cars become EVs, that the existing highway system couldn’t be somehow outfitted to provide something like induction charging of EVs as the drive? This is a much weirder concept, and I’m sure there would be massive concerns about safety, but given how reliably wireless charging of phones has become, I’m curious if there is some reason this isn’t theoretically possible?
So, obviously, with the shape and design of current Tesla EV batteries, this wouldn’t work, but why, in theory, is it impossible to have sort of EV battery “swapping” stations in place of destination chargers? The idea would be that, rather than owning your car battery, you have access to a system of stations where you could go when your battery is low and the station has a stock of fully charged batteries that are mechanically swapped by some automated process. They would then take your previous battery and charge it up to install in a future customer.
I realize that current EVs just aren’t designed this way, but is there any other practical reason this wouldn’t work? Tesla obviously has the best EV charging infrastructure right now, destination charging other EVs on any long trip requires massive research and time budgeting as they’re often full, broken or underpowered. This just seems like a much better solution to me and, as a bonus, it would allow for more routine battery maintenance by technicians who could service batteries that have problems quickly, making the whole system more reliable.
Other than the need for a universal standard across vehicles, can anyone explain to me the obstacles?
On a side note, for the technologically minded, is there anyway that, as a larger portion of cars become EVs, that the existing highway system couldn’t be somehow outfitted to provide something like induction charging of EVs as the drive? This is a much weirder concept, and I’m sure there would be massive concerns about safety, but given how reliably wireless charging of phones has become, I’m curious if there is some reason this isn’t theoretically possible?
