When I was in Taiwan we saw Gogoro scooters in the wild. The battery is swapped at a kiosk in a couple of minutes. Riders pay a subscription for the scooter and access to the battery kiosk.
Seems like a really great option. I would love to have that in my city. We have dockless bicycles and scooters but a more capable and personal option would be awesome. I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
Sadly my city planners do not seem aware of motorcycles as a transportation option. We have no laws or infrastructure to encourage them or take advantage of the benefits. At a state level we at least get to cut ferry lines, but that seems to be the only perk.
In this 2 minute video demonstrating a Gogoro swap the rider goes from opening their seat to having a fresh battery and ready to ride in about 50 seconds:
I love the fact there's 2 smaller batteries instead of 1 big one. There's a lot of people with back problems (for example my wife) and this kind of design helps them a lot. Can't wait for this to come to Poland.
I wonder how long before someone comes up with a fake battery pack that looks identical and registers as having a higher battery power then it actually does and has fewer cells internally so they can take the real higher power more cells genuine battery and leave behind a fake on that barely works. Like fake memory cards you can get from wish.com that state they have much higher memory then what they actually have.
Motorcycles have about 29 times the deaths per mile compared to cars. If all you're worried about is saving space and gas they're a great option - my Honda cruiser gets about 80mpg. But it's incredibly dangerous. I think it's plausible that safety could improve with infrastructure changes and driver education, but I don't think it could ever compare to being strapped into a metal cage with airbags and crumple zones
I drove for 6 years with 3 different bikes (125cc scooter + 125cc small bike + 600cc bike)... and as much as I love it, I gave it up. I have to fight the urge to buy a new one every few months. I've fallen & had accidents 4 times and I'm lucky to be alive to be honest. It helps to know the stats around the death rates and to watch a few accident aftermath scenes to cure yourself.
I truly do want everyone to drive them for all the benefits they bring but I also truly don't want a single person to die like that, so I no longer recommend that other people buy them (not even a scooter for short distances).
I hear a lot of how motorcycles are dangerous and they absolutely are. But 1/2 of wrecks are single vehicle wrecks and most of the other wrecks are cars turning in front of motorcycles or motorcycles getting rear-ended at lights.
American streets are designed poorly, see stroads and all that. If we want motorcycle fatalities to go down, we need to strive for all fatalities to go down.
Yes 5.5k riders died last year, but 42K car drivers died. Yet we're fine with that because "well per mile that isn't that bad" 42K isn't a good number and there needs to be greater discussion surrounding the poor driving conditions created by poor planning.
Not to mention that in a substantial portion of the world, motorcycles aren't practical for most of the year. Snow, ice and cold aren't great for two-wheeled vehicles.
[citation needed]. Not because I doubt the number (it seems plausible), but because I'd like to see the data.
IMO once You factor for speed and environment (how much time will any of those electric city scooters ever ride on highway and/or above maybe 50-60kph?), You'll be left with two causes of accidents - rider who loses control (exponentially less deadly with reduced speed) and scooter vs car crash on intersections / in lanes. In this case, much as those crumple zones work well for whoever is inside the metal box, they also add extra mass / energy to the body that's being deformed on the outside...
Yes, motocycle is evidently more dangerous than car. But, some people don't have a choice. In some country, car is still a luxury. For example, in my country, a used car can cost at least 3 times a brand new motocycle.
You are talking about the stats from an American perspective. Such a car-centric view. Not everyone lives in America.
Hundreds of cities and countries have infrastructure suitable for two wheelers. Especially when you are within the city limits. Cities in India it is extremely common to ride two-wheelers and it is generally safer to ride scooters. Most delivery drivers use motorcycles - millions of them in fact.
In that case, it would be awesome to have some sort of standard battery for e-bikes, scooters, etc. Then you can just stop by some battery switching place swap one out on demand.
The other amazing benefit for this plan is that batteries are expected to fail and loose capacity after a few years. So being able to easily swap the most vulnerable component is awesome for long-term repairability!
We have subscription escooters which seem tempting to me, but the costs never pencil out. They end up being as much as the scooter within a years time or so, plus you are on the hook if some major damage or theft happens. Whats the point of that then? Might as well look for someone who will let you finance an ebike and put it on your renters or homeowners insurance for protection at that rate.
My wife and I just rode Lime scooters in San Francisco and I was shocked by the cost. We rode about 4 miles in 45 minutes. When we got off, we were charged $60 (about $30 each). We could have taken Uber or Lyft for less.
They have 1-hour and 1-day options, but I was told by CS (after) that the 1-hour pass only includes 30-minutes of actual riding. Uhg.
I might buy one, because they are so fun, but I probably won’t rent one again.
I’m talking stand on scooters vs the sit on motorcycle type ones.
The value subscriptions (bikes/ebikes for me in SF) is in not having to worry about it. I can bike to anywhere in the city and generally leave the bike there and walk or bus. Or I can do the reverse. I'm also not on the hook for maintenance.
It's a very different thing than owning.
Edit: I want to be clear that this is about the economics and ease of owning vs renting, not the particular prices. Lyft bikes have memberships+rental fees or just rental fees, and they can be pretty expensive, but so can buying an ebike.
Access to credit is not as easy in India. This is just a straightforward capex to opex transformation that people can intuitively grasp. Combine that with no minimum commitment and it's transparent to them what expenses are, what income is, and what net income is.
Indian users are very price-sensitive and there are extensive discussion networks running the numbers on these. They won't use these services unless it makes financial sense.
Gogoro is a completely different model than Lime/Bird/Spin/etc. With Gogoro you subscribe to the battery swap service and own the scooter. Also, it's a sit-down scooter (more akin to a motorcycle) that can go 90 km/h, not a stand-up kick scooter.
The point of that is that renting confers specific benefits that make it worthwhile despite the downsides. First off, no need to charge. Not the worst thing but there's nothing worse than running out of battery because you forgot to charge it. Additionally, no maintenance - the company employs mechanics that are better positioned to fix the scooters. Finally, no need to have the scooter with you - just use it whenever you want, in one direction, and then not have to lug a scooter with you for the rest of the day. Or, if you didn't ride it in, you can't use it for the rest of the day. If it's raining in the morning but clear in the evening, you don't have the scooter to ride home unless you rode it in for your morning commute.
Now, you may not find that list enough to offset the downsides compared to buying your own, but judging from their seeming success, I'm not the only person that's done the math and intentionally chooses renting a scooter as-needed.
Motorcycles are extremely dangerous. Research about accidents and (lack of) safety where they're popular: Índia, Brazil, etc. You don't wanna go to funerals after this comes to your city, trust me. One doctor working on organ transplant told me once that almost 90% of donors in one Brazilian big city were riders of urban motorcycles.
The stats can be a bit deceptive when it comes to motorbikes. Focusing on the first world (where I know the situation) the death rate for 16-24 year old males is massive relative to cars while 25+ is much closer to normal vehicle deaths.
In terms of organ donation, that is because an astonishing amount of people don't wear a helmet when on a motorcycle or wear one of those fashionable open-face helmets.
Many people are also unaware you can get airbags for motorcyclists (https://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/alpinestars-tech-air-5-s...). This is obviously a thing more for first world riders and they are expensive but are very effective at preventing any injury you can't walk away from (assuming you also wear a proper helmet like I mentioned).
It also depends on what area they ride. It's pretty safe in my city, we ride under 50km/h in-city, and I never ride above 70km/h outside city. 20 years, zero crashes. However, some city is crazy, 70km/h is norm around city center. Not including driving fast sounds cool? (I think it's instead, lame, nothing else to show off)
Correlation isn't necessarily causation. The majority of organ donors in the US are probably car drivers, for example. They also breathe oxygen, which can be fatal in the long term.
I rode on Gogoro scooters in Ishigaki, it was one of my most memorable trips! The island is a perfect environment for it: warm, nicely paved roads going through beautiful nature, can't get too far away from anything because it's an island, and battery swap stations placed strategically around so you don't feel uneasy about running out of charge.
Those things have some good acceleration and are a blast to drive.
You almost need a scooter in these large third world mega cities. The streets are narrow as hell, they can’t really handle cars. On the flip side. Cars are stuck in traffic all day and rarely get to cruising speeds without making a left turn into another traffic jam. Scooters let you move around in that clusterfuck and no car is moving fast enough to kill you. Good luck staying safe in scooter in America though.
We have several escooter services in The Netherlands (GO Sharing, Check, felyx, etc.) which are operating in the larger city's. It’s all subscription based and not that expensive comparing to owning a scooter with these current gas prices.
The batteries are swapped at location and transported to and from the nearest chargestation. You have to take a photo when entering and leaving the scooter through the app. An investigation will be started by the issuer when a scooter got damaged. The last driver will not be responsible if it can’t be proved that the driver did the damage.
The engineering company I work briefly passed over few proposals from South Asian companies deploying them. We worked on electric bikes, but decided to pass on a real road going scooter as we have near no vehicle experience besides individual electronic components.
Both leading battery swap standards in India are from Taiwan. One is GoGoRo as you said, and another is Ionex.
Ionex based scooters usually have more in the roadgoing department, and GoGoRo more in internet/app features.
GoGoRo is founded by a Taiwanese guy who worked for a famous company in America, thus he is using his fame to get big money from financial funds. Manufacturing is mostly OEM.
Ionex is made by an established player — Kymco (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDNKQ18-QYY,) and has more firm standing in the industry. They have their own parts, and share service centres with their petrol scooters. The later is a very big thing in India, and South Asia in general.
The biggest impediment for both turned out to be India road. Taiwanese scooters with tiny wheels don't fare well anywhere outside of big cities.
Rural Indians really prefer classic motorcycles — cheap, repairable, no exotic parts. The "app" things doesn't sell at all either. The only useful function for many on smart scooters is a theft alarm + GPS.
I wonder if the electric car market (i.e. Tesla) is ripe for disruption.
I read the article and thought back to the demo [1] Tesla did years ago of automated battery swap. Tesla did it as a stunt; they publicly stated that they didn't plan to market that.
As a Tesla owner, I don't want battery swap as long as I am paying for the battery as part of the price of the car. I'd be worried that my brand new max-range battery would be swapped with old worn-out batteries, and I would feel like I lost value.
However, on road trips, I would much prefer a 5-10 minute battery swap over supercharging (which they no longer give me for free). The electric car experience would essentially be the same as the IC experience.
If Tesla (or someone) sold me a car without a battery, and I had to buy a battery "subscription", I might go for that. I'd get a huge discount off the base price of the car, and now I wouldn't be concerned about swapping since it's not my battery. I'd do my normal day-to-day as usual, and on road trips or unexpected usage, I could swap out in minutes. I could get on board with that.
This is happening at a pretty large scale in China with NIO brand vehicles.
For it to work, as you said it is a subscription model for the battery.
It requires a very large fleet of vehicles that all use a standardized battery size. That means not offering lower priced vehicles with smaller battery packs, since you're just able to swap it anyway. And it means not having higher-end larger vehicles with larger packs, since now they aren't standardized.
That also means you are using more battery cells than needed for some customers, and you need more total battery packs in circulation as well.
So it can work, but there are definitely tradeoffs to vehicle design, and I doubt the US market could come together to create a standard used by a large enough percentage of the fleet to be worthwhile. We have some brand segmentation in DC fast chargers, but imagine if Chevy and Ford and Honda all had different battery swap stations. And within brands, can an F-150 use the same battery pack as a Ford Escape?
I would think you would only need a standard size battery, and have vehicles capable of holding as many standard-sized batteries as necessary for their weight/performance. So a compact car would have 1 C-sized battery (joke), and a F150 would have 5, for example.
While currently, thr stations have to be manned, there is potential for this to be completely unmanned drivethrough where you take the car and never have to get out of it, you pay and the battery is changed for you in 3 minutes (which also looks like it could be improved, and that could come down to less than a minute).
I have no doubt that this will absolutely kill the competition.
Also, it doesn't have to be one standard size. A standard interface with a few standard sizes will work just fine.
My opinion on when Tesla will be ripe for disruption is when more than one car manufacturer agree on a battery swap technology. Once we have that we might see a city offer a fleet of cars for car-share services first (or rental) and then it could take off from there. We aren't there yet and at least a few years out.
Better Place, the electric car company that was launched in Israel with Renault was doing that. You could charge at home or go to a station and have your battery swapped in minutes. I think they did that mostly to make sure people will always know they can charge quickly and not waste time in a station for that.
I think the logistics for battery swapping in bikes vs cars is completely different.
A battery in a car is a critical piece of mechanical equipment, that lowers CG, forms an important part of the stability calculations etc. As such, the fixtures that hold a car battery in place are much more rugged and designed so.
Making that a swappable design adds more weight to an already overweight car (for example, having a rugged frame casing that has a removable batter inside)
Not just delivery drivers, this is essential for everyone in India that uses a two-wheeler. India has always been known for its notorious costs of Petroleum and its unaffordability to anyone other than the rich.
We need the EV transformation to make sure people are more economically sustainable. A handsome side-effect of it would be the dramatic drop in air pollution given the population density in India
India taxes petroleum that much not to generate more revenue -- for they can always raise the sales tax rates -- but to reduce consumption and keep the balance of payments in check.
I tried to reply to another comment that was since deleted. It said something along the lines of:
>I don't get why Tesla would kill their battery-swapping while they are tackling other Hard Problems.
The practicality of battery swapping decreases exponentially as size and weight scale. The cost of building a battery swapping network for western-car-sized battery systems, even once solving the engineering elements (which are manageable), are likely a non-starter. Especially if the other principle technology rival is fast-charging stations.
How much added convenience is required to justify huge mechanical systems with many wear components and large maintenance costs over replacing a few charging cables every X months? Lots.
I suspect that battery hot-swapping will be practical for electric trucks. Charging them is really slow unless you use a dozen of cables. Parked time costs real money for them. Normal trucks unload, reload, and go back to the highway pretty soon, often with a different driver at the wheel.
Truck yards usually already have equipment for heavy lifting, and the batteries need not be tailored to the car aesthetics and space constraints. Also, a narrower industry has a better chance to come up with a common standard.
I think the trick is not to swap the whole battery
Instead design in a space for a secondary battery, maybe 40% the capacity of the main battery. Make those standard and swap-able.
Now, you can use the car as ordinary in either the one-battery or two-battery mode, with the 1B config being more nimble handling with less range, and the 2B config more range. In any case, you can then enjoy rapid-swap of the standard 2nd battery, or maybe just rent one for a long trip.
This also helps the automakers keep their proprietary designs on the main battery for differentiation. The 2nd battery could go in the extra trunk space or something...
I suspect that Tesla battery swaps were never a serious endeavor meant to be rolled out, and were instead by design limited to one location merely to be used as a massively profitable tax credit scheme: https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2014/12/30/te...
Doing battery swaps on such vehicles would be incredibly difficult (least of all from an engineering perspective), and my suspicion that it was more subsidy scam than genuine attempt is based on other factors.
Back when electric vehicles were the most popular automobile, battery changes were used to keep electric trucks and taxis on the road longer. Some companies were around 20 years just doing electric vehicle battery changes and service. This was called Power-as-a-Service, or PaaS.
Every single person who's ever put batteries in the back of some consumer electronics device immediately thinks, "Why don't they just make it so you can swap batteries in EVs?" I was definitely no different.
I now own a few eBikes including a DIY conversion, a Sur Ron dirt bike and an Onyx emoto. The batteries are just so insanely compact and heavy, it's surreal. The Onyx has a removable 72v/48ah extended range battery which weighs 37lbs (17kg) [1], similar to the weight of the swappable batteries in the article. Let me tell you, that may not seem like a lot of weight, but it really is and it's *just so dense!* It's the equivalent of over 4 gallons of milk contained in two shoe boxes.
Seriously, every time I have to move - or should I say "manhandle" - the batteries in any of the bikes, I audibly groan and make sure to lift with my legs. The batteries are all different shapes, sizes and in various boxes and all shockingly heavy for their size. The sharp edges of the Onyx battery box is a true hazard as its momentum will give your thigh a nice bruise should you swing it, or your car a nice dent.
Anyways, I'm sharing all this to say: Batteries are heavy af. Really. As good as a solution this is for scooters, don't expect it to go much more beyond that. There won't be swappable batteries on your big Zero or Livewire any time soon.
Each scooter has 2 smaller batteries, presumably because of this problem.
I own a Sur Ron too, and I don't find the stock battery weight to be an issue. ~30 lbs isn't unreasonable for the average person to lift. It's amazing they packed a dirt bike into 125 lbs. I'm able to lift it over barriers and load/unload it from my sedan, and it doesn't ride far off from a mountain bike. It's only twice the weight of a top of the line e-mountain bike, but has 7x the power output and goes further. Easy decision. It's the most fun machine I've ever owned.
Zero uses 3.6 kwh modular batteries. I'm guessing they are 40-50 lbs or so which is probably around the upper limit the average person would be comfortable lifting and loading regularly. I'm sure they could be engineered to sell them in smaller sized units, but I don't think they're actually hot swappable.
> ~30 lbs isn't unreasonable for the average person to lift.
I agree, but it's definitely at the limit of comfort, especially for smaller people (which I've witnessed personally). That's literally a third of the body weight of some fully grown women!! Much heavier than that and the batteries are just unwieldy, if not outright dangerous.
Stark's bike is cool, but honestly it's just the first of a wave of e-dirtbikes that are coming from literally every motorcycle manufacturer there is. (Stark's founders also seem to be a bit full of themselves, but that may have just been their marketing department getting a little overzealous.)
(I'd love to share your experience with the Sur Ron, but I only "own" mine in the sense that I was the one who purchased it. My son has been doing all the riding on it! Like you, he loves it. I see another one, or a Talaria, in my future soon.)
I remember in 2013 electric skateboards were all of the rage. I felt like a pariah with an electric scooter. I told people they were the future because skateboards are just too dangerous imo.
I’m glad to see this happen.
What I want now is an electric assist scooter, where then battery is smaller and it simply makes your manual pushes far stronger.
I’m no electric engineer, but I think there’s an opportunity here. If you can minimize the resistance added by adding an electric motor you might be able to really decrease the weight of the scooter if it only propels you on push.
Are scooters significantly safer? (I'm assuming you mean the small 2 wheeled scooter that looks a bit like a skateboard with a steering post, not a vespa style "mini motorcycle" scooter which is the scooter referenced in this article).
I don't know how to clearly differentiate between the two types of scooter when talking about them.
I strongly believe the addition of the handlebars makes a scooter much safer to use for an average person compared to an electric skate or longboard. I say this as someone who has owned all three.
Best example of this is braking. Most electric longboards accelerate and decelerate as fast or faster than a scooter. However the laws of motion still apply. Without something to hold onto you have to actually anticipate your deceleration and lean back when decelerating - very unintuitive.
When I had an electric longboard I let several people use it and saw several people fall over (fortunately they fell on their feet)
Yes they are. For two reasons. The handlebars, and importantly the wheels are much larger than a skateboard [1]
The larger wheels make for a much smoother ride, and they handle bumps far better. You’ll pop over a bump that would send a skateboard into an instant brake.
I suppose you could get away with a slightly smaller motor if you don't need super torque, but it's the battery that accounts for a huge amount of weight.
Readit News
Seems like a really great option. I would love to have that in my city. We have dockless bicycles and scooters but a more capable and personal option would be awesome. I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
Sadly my city planners do not seem aware of motorcycles as a transportation option. We have no laws or infrastructure to encourage them or take advantage of the benefits. At a state level we at least get to cut ferry lines, but that seems to be the only perk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W34k0nrrDQA
Just noticed the Gogoro swap logo in the video. Looks very similar to the Arduino logo. Only difference being the +/- positions are swapped.
Dead Comment
I truly do want everyone to drive them for all the benefits they bring but I also truly don't want a single person to die like that, so I no longer recommend that other people buy them (not even a scooter for short distances).
American streets are designed poorly, see stroads and all that. If we want motorcycle fatalities to go down, we need to strive for all fatalities to go down.
Yes 5.5k riders died last year, but 42K car drivers died. Yet we're fine with that because "well per mile that isn't that bad" 42K isn't a good number and there needs to be greater discussion surrounding the poor driving conditions created by poor planning.
IMO once You factor for speed and environment (how much time will any of those electric city scooters ever ride on highway and/or above maybe 50-60kph?), You'll be left with two causes of accidents - rider who loses control (exponentially less deadly with reduced speed) and scooter vs car crash on intersections / in lanes. In this case, much as those crumple zones work well for whoever is inside the metal box, they also add extra mass / energy to the body that's being deformed on the outside...
Hundreds of cities and countries have infrastructure suitable for two wheelers. Especially when you are within the city limits. Cities in India it is extremely common to ride two-wheelers and it is generally safer to ride scooters. Most delivery drivers use motorcycles - millions of them in fact.
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If more car owners would at least sometimes switch to the smaller option, it would make life easier and safer for 2 wheel drivers.
This is not likely though, so I hope for ebikes and more cycle lanes and car free zones in cities, to make it more attractive.
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Kymco has their own design and partnerships, but are way behind now on reach and marketshare.
They have 1-hour and 1-day options, but I was told by CS (after) that the 1-hour pass only includes 30-minutes of actual riding. Uhg.
I might buy one, because they are so fun, but I probably won’t rent one again.
I’m talking stand on scooters vs the sit on motorcycle type ones.
It's a very different thing than owning.
Edit: I want to be clear that this is about the economics and ease of owning vs renting, not the particular prices. Lyft bikes have memberships+rental fees or just rental fees, and they can be pretty expensive, but so can buying an ebike.
Indian users are very price-sensitive and there are extensive discussion networks running the numbers on these. They won't use these services unless it makes financial sense.
- No maintenance or upgrade cost
- Low upfront cost
- Low commitment
Now, you may not find that list enough to offset the downsides compared to buying your own, but judging from their seeming success, I'm not the only person that's done the math and intentionally chooses renting a scooter as-needed.
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In terms of organ donation, that is because an astonishing amount of people don't wear a helmet when on a motorcycle or wear one of those fashionable open-face helmets.
Many people are also unaware you can get airbags for motorcyclists (https://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/alpinestars-tech-air-5-s...). This is obviously a thing more for first world riders and they are expensive but are very effective at preventing any injury you can't walk away from (assuming you also wear a proper helmet like I mentioned).
Those things have some good acceleration and are a blast to drive.
But enough about Los Angeles
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Dead Comment
The batteries are swapped at location and transported to and from the nearest chargestation. You have to take a photo when entering and leaving the scooter through the app. An investigation will be started by the issuer when a scooter got damaged. The last driver will not be responsible if it can’t be proved that the driver did the damage.
Both leading battery swap standards in India are from Taiwan. One is GoGoRo as you said, and another is Ionex.
Ionex based scooters usually have more in the roadgoing department, and GoGoRo more in internet/app features.
GoGoRo is founded by a Taiwanese guy who worked for a famous company in America, thus he is using his fame to get big money from financial funds. Manufacturing is mostly OEM.
Ionex is made by an established player — Kymco (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDNKQ18-QYY,) and has more firm standing in the industry. They have their own parts, and share service centres with their petrol scooters. The later is a very big thing in India, and South Asia in general.
The biggest impediment for both turned out to be India road. Taiwanese scooters with tiny wheels don't fare well anywhere outside of big cities.
Rural Indians really prefer classic motorcycles — cheap, repairable, no exotic parts. The "app" things doesn't sell at all either. The only useful function for many on smart scooters is a theft alarm + GPS.
Deleted Comment
I read the article and thought back to the demo [1] Tesla did years ago of automated battery swap. Tesla did it as a stunt; they publicly stated that they didn't plan to market that.
As a Tesla owner, I don't want battery swap as long as I am paying for the battery as part of the price of the car. I'd be worried that my brand new max-range battery would be swapped with old worn-out batteries, and I would feel like I lost value.
However, on road trips, I would much prefer a 5-10 minute battery swap over supercharging (which they no longer give me for free). The electric car experience would essentially be the same as the IC experience.
If Tesla (or someone) sold me a car without a battery, and I had to buy a battery "subscription", I might go for that. I'd get a huge discount off the base price of the car, and now I wouldn't be concerned about swapping since it's not my battery. I'd do my normal day-to-day as usual, and on road trips or unexpected usage, I could swap out in minutes. I could get on board with that.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY ed: added video link
For it to work, as you said it is a subscription model for the battery.
It requires a very large fleet of vehicles that all use a standardized battery size. That means not offering lower priced vehicles with smaller battery packs, since you're just able to swap it anyway. And it means not having higher-end larger vehicles with larger packs, since now they aren't standardized.
That also means you are using more battery cells than needed for some customers, and you need more total battery packs in circulation as well.
So it can work, but there are definitely tradeoffs to vehicle design, and I doubt the US market could come together to create a standard used by a large enough percentage of the fleet to be worthwhile. We have some brand segmentation in DC fast chargers, but imagine if Chevy and Ford and Honda all had different battery swap stations. And within brands, can an F-150 use the same battery pack as a Ford Escape?
https://youtu.be/hTsrDpsYHrw
While currently, thr stations have to be manned, there is potential for this to be completely unmanned drivethrough where you take the car and never have to get out of it, you pay and the battery is changed for you in 3 minutes (which also looks like it could be improved, and that could come down to less than a minute).
I have no doubt that this will absolutely kill the competition.
Also, it doesn't have to be one standard size. A standard interface with a few standard sizes will work just fine.
Charging is already at the level it adds only 10% to the road trip time compared to an ICE car (see Bjorn Nyland's 1000km tests).
A battery in a car is a critical piece of mechanical equipment, that lowers CG, forms an important part of the stability calculations etc. As such, the fixtures that hold a car battery in place are much more rugged and designed so.
Making that a swappable design adds more weight to an already overweight car (for example, having a rugged frame casing that has a removable batter inside)
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(Probably gleaned from Munro Live on youtube. It might have been another mfg, like Rivian or BYD.)
We need the EV transformation to make sure people are more economically sustainable. A handsome side-effect of it would be the dramatic drop in air pollution given the population density in India
Wouldn't the same factors like state tax, central tax, political interference affect battery charges too? Or none of them matter?
In this case, the battery swapping robot is you.
The practicality of battery swapping decreases exponentially as size and weight scale. The cost of building a battery swapping network for western-car-sized battery systems, even once solving the engineering elements (which are manageable), are likely a non-starter. Especially if the other principle technology rival is fast-charging stations.
How much added convenience is required to justify huge mechanical systems with many wear components and large maintenance costs over replacing a few charging cables every X months? Lots.
Truck yards usually already have equipment for heavy lifting, and the batteries need not be tailored to the car aesthetics and space constraints. Also, a narrower industry has a better chance to come up with a common standard.
Instead design in a space for a secondary battery, maybe 40% the capacity of the main battery. Make those standard and swap-able.
Now, you can use the car as ordinary in either the one-battery or two-battery mode, with the 1B config being more nimble handling with less range, and the 2B config more range. In any case, you can then enjoy rapid-swap of the standard 2nd battery, or maybe just rent one for a long trip.
This also helps the automakers keep their proprietary designs on the main battery for differentiation. The 2nd battery could go in the extra trunk space or something...
Doing battery swaps on such vehicles would be incredibly difficult (least of all from an engineering perspective), and my suspicion that it was more subsidy scam than genuine attempt is based on other factors.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...
Fascinating, and thank you for linking.
I now own a few eBikes including a DIY conversion, a Sur Ron dirt bike and an Onyx emoto. The batteries are just so insanely compact and heavy, it's surreal. The Onyx has a removable 72v/48ah extended range battery which weighs 37lbs (17kg) [1], similar to the weight of the swappable batteries in the article. Let me tell you, that may not seem like a lot of weight, but it really is and it's *just so dense!* It's the equivalent of over 4 gallons of milk contained in two shoe boxes.
Seriously, every time I have to move - or should I say "manhandle" - the batteries in any of the bikes, I audibly groan and make sure to lift with my legs. The batteries are all different shapes, sizes and in various boxes and all shockingly heavy for their size. The sharp edges of the Onyx battery box is a true hazard as its momentum will give your thigh a nice bruise should you swing it, or your car a nice dent.
Anyways, I'm sharing all this to say: Batteries are heavy af. Really. As good as a solution this is for scooters, don't expect it to go much more beyond that. There won't be swappable batteries on your big Zero or Livewire any time soon.
1. https://www.onyxmotorbikes.com/collections/parts/products/rc...
I own a Sur Ron too, and I don't find the stock battery weight to be an issue. ~30 lbs isn't unreasonable for the average person to lift. It's amazing they packed a dirt bike into 125 lbs. I'm able to lift it over barriers and load/unload it from my sedan, and it doesn't ride far off from a mountain bike. It's only twice the weight of a top of the line e-mountain bike, but has 7x the power output and goes further. Easy decision. It's the most fun machine I've ever owned.
Zero uses 3.6 kwh modular batteries. I'm guessing they are 40-50 lbs or so which is probably around the upper limit the average person would be comfortable lifting and loading regularly. I'm sure they could be engineered to sell them in smaller sized units, but I don't think they're actually hot swappable.
Keeping my eye on this one: https://starkfuture.com/en-us-US/products/stark-varg
I agree, but it's definitely at the limit of comfort, especially for smaller people (which I've witnessed personally). That's literally a third of the body weight of some fully grown women!! Much heavier than that and the batteries are just unwieldy, if not outright dangerous.
Stark's bike is cool, but honestly it's just the first of a wave of e-dirtbikes that are coming from literally every motorcycle manufacturer there is. (Stark's founders also seem to be a bit full of themselves, but that may have just been their marketing department getting a little overzealous.)
(I'd love to share your experience with the Sur Ron, but I only "own" mine in the sense that I was the one who purchased it. My son has been doing all the riding on it! Like you, he loves it. I see another one, or a Talaria, in my future soon.)
I’m glad to see this happen.
What I want now is an electric assist scooter, where then battery is smaller and it simply makes your manual pushes far stronger.
I’m no electric engineer, but I think there’s an opportunity here. If you can minimize the resistance added by adding an electric motor you might be able to really decrease the weight of the scooter if it only propels you on push.
I don't know how to clearly differentiate between the two types of scooter when talking about them.
Best example of this is braking. Most electric longboards accelerate and decelerate as fast or faster than a scooter. However the laws of motion still apply. Without something to hold onto you have to actually anticipate your deceleration and lean back when decelerating - very unintuitive.
When I had an electric longboard I let several people use it and saw several people fall over (fortunately they fell on their feet)
The larger wheels make for a much smoother ride, and they handle bumps far better. You’ll pop over a bump that would send a skateboard into an instant brake.
[1] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/l9n5zWm0N5o/maxresdefault.jpg
Strangely the article could apply to a traditional standing scooter as well. What a coincidence.
I did think the 50 mile range was a bit overzealous - shoulda known.
https://youtu.be/xZigLuaijsI