China Pushes Electric Car Factory To Apply Battery Exchange, Tesla et Al. Refuse

NIO Power Swap Station, now continues to be strengthened by the Chinese government. (photo: twitter @NIOGlobal)

JAKARTA – Innovations to find the most practical way of slicing electric car batteries continue to be carried out by many electric car manufacturers in the world. One of the methods offered is the slicing method by exchanging an old battery that has run out of power with a new battery.

This is similar to filling an empty or empty gallon of mineral water with a new gallon of mineral water. This method is considered effective because car owners do not have to wait for hours while charging. Through this battery swab method, it can be done in a stop and go manner.

But not all car manufacturers agree with this method. A year ago Tesla rejected an alternative route of swapping electric car batteries, which it described as "ridden with problems and unsuitable for large-scale use". Beijing doesn't seem to agree.

In fact, China is now pushing hard for the use of swappable batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), as a supplement to charging ordinary vehicles. Even the government continues to provide the impetus behind some of the companies advancing the technology.

The four companies - automakers Nio and Geely, battery swap developer Aulton, and state-owned oil producer Sinopec, said they plan to build a total of 24.000 exchange stations across the country by 2025. This number is up from around 1.400 today.

Battery swapping allows the driver to quickly replace a depleted pack with a fully charged one, rather than plugging the vehicle into a charging point. Swapping batteries can help reduce the growing strain on the power grid as millions of drivers continue to grow. But experts warn it could only take off in a big way if batteries become the industry-wide standard.

However, if China succeeds in making this battery swap successful on a large scale, the change could undermine the business models of global brands such as Tesla, Volkswagen, and General Motors. Because their production EV is designed and powered by their own battery. Even in the case of Tesla, charging is done by their own charging network.

Battery swapping, replacing a depleted battery with a freshly recharged one, is nothing new. According to industry historian David A. Kirsch, the first experiments to swap batteries in electric cars date back to America's Gilded Age in the late 1890s.

Here is a chronology of important events in the development of battery swap:

1896: Automotive pioneers consider swapping depleted batteries for new ones as a way to expand the operating range of early rudimentary electric vehicles, from trams to delivery trucks.

1912: General Electric Co (GE.N) teams up with local partners in Connecticut to launch a "battery service" that allows electric vehicle owners to swap batteries for a simple monthly fee and a variable fee per mile. Other similar services have sprung up in major cities.

The semi-mechanical exchange takes only three minutes at some stations. And by separating the battery from the vehicle, the service helps lower initial costs by a third or more.

1924: General Electric's GeVeCo battery service is discontinued. Declining demand for electric vehicles and lack of interest in battery standardization across the industry halted the further development of electric vehicle battery swaps for more than 80 years.

2007: Silicon Valley startup Better Place develops a "battery transfer" process and lists Renault-Nissan for pilot projects in several countries.

2008: Beijing Olympics showcases a fleet of 50 electric buses equipped with interchangeable batteries. Wanxiang from China demonstrates an electric bus with a swappable battery at the Olympics.

2010: Better Place was invited to meet with officials from the state-owned China Grid (STGRD.UL) to discuss battery swapping. China Grid ended the talks without a deal.

2013: The same problems that helped shut down GeVeCo's services decades earlier, particularly the lack of interest in consumers and vehicle manufacturers, went after Better Place. After raising - and burning - more than $600 million in investor money in just six years, the company filed for bankruptcy.

2013: Tesla offers a limited battery swap service for the new Model S, which was designed from the start to accommodate swappable batteries. The swap process was difficult (“troublesome,” recalls a former Tesla executive) and the pilot program quietly retired in 2015. Tesla CEO Elon Musk ordered his team to turn its attention to instead building an exclusive network of charging stations called “superchargers.”

2014: Nio is founded in China, with satellite operations in the United States and Europe. In 2017, it announced plans to offer customers a swappable battery option, a service that began in 2018.