hacktheself t1_j23ubhw wrote
Reply to comment by bremidon in ELI5 why do electric vehicles have one big battery that's hard to replace once it's expired, rather than lots of smaller ones that could be swapped out based on need (to trade off range/power/weight)? by ginonofalg
you made highly erroneous assumptions.
the claim of 10-20x efficiency for chargers vs swappers is intriguing
a swap station is bulkier and more expensive to build but at the same time is capable of continuously charging more batteries in parallel and testing all the batteries at the same time
additionally if you have five cars queueing for one 5min swap that’s 20min for the last car; if you have five cars queueing for four fast chargers, even if that fast charge is 10min, average wait time per vehicle is longer and that assumes full high speed delivery of fast charge which is dependent on multiple factors
this latter phenomenon is parallel to the walk left-stand right concept commonly used in escalators except statistically speaking standing on both sides moves everyone faster, both in teens of average speed and throughput and increases escalator reliability since the steps aren’t unevenly worn
the final bullet point is a good one, and there are multiple possible answers but a reasonable one is that access to the battery network is subscription based as in you pay a monthly fee for the batteries
additionally against your final point: swappable batteries aren’t structural but the frame around them most assuredly is, just like how the battery box at least should be structural but the batteries themselves cannot be for safety reasons
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