It is an interesting concept....especially for cars which are often used for longer journeys. Personally, until they can sell me a car that has a 300 mile range at M-way speeds, I'm not interested, but being able to swap batteries quickly along the way would be a possibility. But swapping a relatively small battery set on a scoot is one thing, but I presume the batteries on a car would be huge, so swapping them would be much more difficult?

MrGrumpy wrote:But swapping a relatively small battery set on a scoot is one thing, but I presume the batteries on a car would be huge, so swapping them would be much more difficult?

Would it not be a multi battery set up?

MrGrumpy wrote:It is an interesting concept....especially for cars which are often used for longer journeys. Personally, until they can sell me a car that has a 300 mile range at M-way speeds, I'm not interested, but being able to swap batteries quickly along the way would be a possibility. But swapping a relatively small battery set on a scoot is one thing, but I presume the batteries on a car would be huge, so swapping them would be much more difficult?

There's a huge resistance to standardising battery packs on cars for some suicidal/masochistic reason.

Because of this charging is time consuming and to an extent dangerous (most battery fires happen when charging, especially fast charging) and there is no economy of scale at all. It's pathetic.

If all EV manufacturers got together and created a standard battery like a giant AA cell they would stand far more change of success. AA cells started out as zinc-carbon, now we have Alkaline, NimH, Nicad and Lithium - i.e. it would allow EV makers to pool resources on their greatest weakness.

Also there is still the issue of those fires, the car the Richard Hammond crashed burned for 5 straight days so I wouldn't put one in my garage.

Yes, standardised batteries and chargers are the only viable option imho. Petrol stations could then switch to being fast (5 mins or less) recharge stations or battery swap stations. An electric vehicle with only a 200 mile range becomes more viable then. Even better if all these vehicles also have a standardised normal charging socket for emergencies where you only have a 13 amp home supply.

Charging at home just isn't practical for people with off street parking - even if you put a charger in every lampost that still wouldn't be anywhere near enough.

I can see it working if all the manufacturers buy in to the same system but
I can see the cost being more than running a normal vehicle, I do like the
idea of lecy vehicles though just waiting for one that will suit me coming
along.