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Project Better Place
- Thread starter tonybelding
- Start date
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- Electric Vehicles
Nice to see this video - it will be going into my armoury against the anti-EV and the hydrogen brigade
What occurs to me in that video is the how specialized the shape of the battery pack is, and how little ground clearance the car has.
There are a variety of well established methods for precision alignment. The ones I'm familiar with are in optics and semiconductor manufacturing, but they certainly exist in many other places. It also helps to design things to be passively self aligning within certain margins.
I'd like to see how they would deal with mud and road grime.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Very cool machinery, but still unnecessary. The costs and space taken up to keep extra charged batteries on hand, the lack of standardized packs, and the fact that a swap station will still need high voltage lines to recharge all those packs, coupled with ever increasing pack range, will probably kill this technology before it even gets off the ground. Oh yeah, and most people will recharge at home for a lot less money than a swap. How profitable would a gas station be if most drivers left home every day with a full tank of gas, which cost a lot less than the gas at a station?
graham
Active Member
Agree with your first point, but not necessarily with the second. Yes, PBP doesn't make much sense with a car like the Roadster, as most people who can afford a Roadster will have a home with a garage and charge at home.
However, I think they are going for the other end of the market. Sell someone a cheap car without the battery, and set up a monthly fee for the battery and swapping. If this allows them to have a $10-$19k car, the people who buy this will often be apartment renters who cannot charge at home. They are willing to battery swap because it comes with the service plan they signed onto when they bought the car.
No idea if consumers will buy into this idea or not, but that is the market they are going after.
That is exactly the point. If I start every day with a full battery from my garage 110 volt or 220 volt outlet, I would need a battery swap about twice per year, if that. With a Roadster range of 200 miles, I doubt I would ever need a battery swap as long as I occassionaly have access to a fast charger between some cities (440 volt, 160 amp).
These swap stations would be so rarely used that I doubt it will ever justify the cost of the land, building, machines, inventory, etc.
Also, gas stations don't make money on the gas they sell.
They make money on the soda and junk that people buy inside.
I think Project Better Place needs to invent a new reason to exist. I appreciate that they have sparked a discussion on what is possible and they are getting politicians to think about EVs. But their business is a disaster financially.
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JRP3
Hyperactive Member
The problem I see is that the original battery pack still has to be paid for, as do all the extra packs, and the charging station itself. Plus there will be extra expense in the vehicle just to make a pack swapable as opposed to hard mounted. This all has to be figured in to the cost of pack swapping, which will have to make each pack swap much more expensive than a home recharge, which takes away one of the main advantages of an EV.
Frankly EV's just won't be practical for people who can't home charge for quite a while until more charging infrastructure is built. Apartments and businesses that offer charging will give themselves an advantage over their non wired competition as EV's continue to catch on.
The point was made to me by someone else that manufacturers would all have to either make their batteries identical (or just use one of a few variations), or the PBP stations would have to stock multiples of all different sizes/shapes/brands of battery. Can you imagine the confusion if there are 20 or 30 different battery styles, you pull in expecting your battery to be replaced, but then they're "out" of your particular style/brand? What do you do then. Can you imagine the dissatisfaction?!
I guess each car manufacturer could have their own swap stations, maybe at dealership service departments in cities, but it starts getting complicated pretty fast.
I guess each car manufacturer could have their own swap stations, maybe at dealership service departments in cities, but it starts getting complicated pretty fast.
And PBP keeps referencing the Cel phone model. Every phone brand uses a different battery, voltage and socket/plug. Even within a single brand.
Oh, and The "J" charging plug that was just approved as a standard has been in the works for 10 years.
Isn't PBP trying to do the same thing the car/oil companies are trying to do? Keep control of the "fuel" component of the equation. Car/oil companies are supporting things like hydrogen or ethanol because they can still keep complex engine systems that take a lot of maintenance and they can keep the driver tied to a fuel station that he has little chance of being able to self produce. PBP is treating the battery like fuel, and therefore tieing themselves into the equation as indespensible for the user, even going so far as to provide charging stations in the home, which is certainly not needed except in very limited cercumstances. Pardon me if I'm just slow, but that brain cell just fired and I hate to waste those at my age.
That seems to reinforce the point IMO. It's bad enough trying to find the right battery for a cell phone and you can fit several dozen brands/sizes on a single wall.
Imagine an EV size battery now...how the hell you gonna store all those? And maintain them? And keep the ones in stock that you really need?
Memorial Day is coming up. Hundreds of thousands of people will be heading to the beach, about 150 miles away from my hometown.
So, imagine that a significant portion of those folks had electric cars with swappable batteries. All winter long there has been virtually no demand at all for battery swaps at the beach, and suddenly there are 20,000 cars wanting batteries Friday evening, and another 20,000 on Sunday looking for a swap for the drive home.
So, what do you do? Store a bunch of very expensive battery packs at the beach all winter? That's a bad business decision, spending lots of capital and not getting any return for a long time, while paying warehousing costs.
No, you truck in battery packs for the weekend on diesel powered trucks, largely negating the advantage of using electric cars in the first place. You also truck in the average number of packs that are expected. If it's a raining weekend, you're going to have a lot of extra packs ready for folks that don't show up. If it's a nice weekend, then you're going to run out of packs and have some very unhappy customers.
So, imagine that a significant portion of those folks had electric cars with swappable batteries. All winter long there has been virtually no demand at all for battery swaps at the beach, and suddenly there are 20,000 cars wanting batteries Friday evening, and another 20,000 on Sunday looking for a swap for the drive home.
So, what do you do? Store a bunch of very expensive battery packs at the beach all winter? That's a bad business decision, spending lots of capital and not getting any return for a long time, while paying warehousing costs.
No, you truck in battery packs for the weekend on diesel powered trucks, largely negating the advantage of using electric cars in the first place. You also truck in the average number of packs that are expected. If it's a raining weekend, you're going to have a lot of extra packs ready for folks that don't show up. If it's a nice weekend, then you're going to run out of packs and have some very unhappy customers.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
The posts the past few days, pointing out the problems with PBP swapping, are really good. A lot of really solid points exploring the real issues with this model.
From my experience with two EVs so far, the only viable solution is to make recharging stations common in parking lots and parking garages. Perhaps a parking meter / recharge station along streets.
220 volts / 40 amp recharging stations would just about handle anything. A one hour recharge would get most cars 20-25 miles of range so it would be perfect if that type of infrastructure was common in the shopping mall parking lots or grocery store parking lots.
"Shop at Best Buy and your recharge is FREE !!!"
If you were at work, your car would have 8-9 hours of recharge time during the day.
From my experience with two EVs so far, the only viable solution is to make recharging stations common in parking lots and parking garages. Perhaps a parking meter / recharge station along streets.
220 volts / 40 amp recharging stations would just about handle anything. A one hour recharge would get most cars 20-25 miles of range so it would be perfect if that type of infrastructure was common in the shopping mall parking lots or grocery store parking lots.
"Shop at Best Buy and your recharge is FREE !!!"
If you were at work, your car would have 8-9 hours of recharge time during the day.
Reallocating inventory is not unusual. Seasonal distribution is quite common in many sectors. (think of the isles in your local store that are dedicated to holidays). That off-season stuff sits in warehouse all across the the country. And weather is something that is a factor on the ski slopes and the beach. Stuff happens.
A diesel truck hauling 40 batteries is not that bad given the option of an equivalent tanker hauling gasoline to fill gasoline burning cars..
Also, a company that is in this business might well have an electric truck. See our TMC thread on the many available.
So that brings it down to class. Consumers with money to own a home and a garage for charging don't need the PBP low budget car.
Less affluent need to buy the budget car and pay the PBP price for battery swap charging.
But it's really not that bad:
*Electric Fuel is 5 times cheaper than petrochemical fuel. It would take a lot of changes for electricity to get even close to gasoline prices -assuming gasoline pricing stays the same!
*cars will still be chargable and unlike sourcing gasoline, owners have the option and ability to get clever about charging at work, crazy long extension cords, plugging into street lamps, etc.
The reason PBP works is it covers everything at once. Solve the chicken/egg problem by getting an automaker to agree to make the car, get an isolated area like Hawaii and get them to agree to saturate the area with chargers. Everyone shakes hands and builds it.
* the PBP plan includes thousands and thousands of chagres in a region. The whole battery swap idea is there for two reasons.
1 for allaying "range anxiety" fears in a new customer market
2 legitimate long trips.
Charge stations are a marketing necessary evil. If it was not there it would be harder to sell the concept. Once they are in, they will surely fade from disuse.
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