I watched that video with much interest, thanks Neil, the basic concept of a battery swap is a great idea but I fear the process as shown may not be workable in a country with significantly less compliant drivers. The Chinese have a remarkable attitude to authority response and, without getting political, I think that is why such a well structured system works for them. In the UK and USA with a significantly larger proportion of non conformists, and I am one myself in some areas, I can see the swap stations being vandalised, the cars being bent so the equipment doesn't work properly etc etc. (Made me smile when he said the whole system for a Nio owner was free of charge!! Errr doesn't that rather defeat the object?

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However the principle is great if you extend it to the possibility of a car with 300+ miles range and the owner having two batteries, one in the car and one at home on slow charge from a normal domestic supply while you drive the 300 miles. For me that would mean a battery swap on average every 4 days or so allowing plenty of time for the battery to trickle charge and hence reduce the load on the network as the charging current draw would be well within your normal household appliance range. eg if a 7Kw charger takes 9 hours to charge a car then in 96 hours you would only need about a 700 watt charger which is less than a single bar fire! Hence no need to upgrade the local network to support lots of overnight 7Kw chargers in a given street.
To make such a system work would obviously require designing a system where, for example, the batteries have undercarriage and docking plugs so basically you would go to the back of your car, press a couple of buttons and the rear panel would raise up and the batteries undercarriage drop to the ground. Then you would switch off a master switch roll that battery out and swap it with the one on your charging point and then roll the fully charged one back in and dock it, raise the undercarriage and lower the rear panel back into place and away you go!! SCHIMPLES!!!
