Battery Swapping Station or Charging station
8 September, 2022
Do we require Battery Swapping station for long Term. The requirement of Battery Swapping system seems good specially for reason Charging time is more to fill a tank in ICE vehicle. The fast charging Time of battery is much more than a filling fuel tank of ICE vehicle. Battery Swapping system may be as an additional services at charging station. The Discussion about need of swappable will be end up when Battery charge time once reached at 5 minutes (expected in few years) . Once charging time of the Batteries will comes down to 5 minutes, the need of swapping will lose its luster, except for some strategic and logistic arena. Now it seems swapping stations makes sense for saving the time of charging an Ev.
The Battery swapping is good in certain Electric vehicle which have easy mounting & replacement ( swapping) for new charged one , especially in scooter , 3/w Auto, Electric Buses and Trucks. Scooter and 3/w Auto have place to accommodate batteries under the driver seat. While in trucks & buses, they have space beneath the chassis in between front and rear wheel, same as cargo space in the luxury buses. Swapping of Battery is not good in Electric cars where the Batteries are embedded beneath the floor of car ,splendidly packed of IP67 grade.
Swapping will be good for strategic logistic & utility mobility machines Swappable batteries good for some strategic or proprietary logistic/ Electric buses or Large Transport organizations . Innovatively also good for agricultural machine, Railway small shunting locomotive for purpose civil construction machine, municipal utility & cleaning machines
No informal specs for interpretability of batteries. There is no universal norms either from industry or Government about format ,shape ,size & specs of swappable battery .If any company brand comes forward to take initiative in this behalf ,then there is risk & consequences about longevity & monopoly. The example of LPG Gas cylinder/ mobile Sim is good to compare for interpretability , which have uniformly /portability. The portability have to be matched on various specification like I) Size dimension II) multiple combination for larger power III) uniform denomination IV) Power storage in kwh. Once such a portability is matched, there are another issue related to further points like (I) inside chemistry make type uniformity ( II) efficiency /degradation level . The efficiency of batteries degrades when using year after years and also depend on number of used life cycle.
Ev Owner`s Issue about security deposit : Popularity of Battery Swapping system will also hamper for Ev owners need to deposit a sum for Batteries given for exchange if they are of different make/ type. As per statement CEO of ABB one of best Ev Charger making company. He said the swapping process also need later battery charging. So why to create an another burden for keeping stock and charge it elsewhere, while it can be charged within keeping intact within same electric
Charging cum Swapping Station needs additional Investment for Battery stock: Additional investment is required besides of having Ac/DC chargers. Keeping stock of Battery will be as an additional investment for a charging station, in addition to Ev chargers for charging such empty Battery. Swapping station owners must have to keep stock/ inventory for transit discharge batteries which need huge investment. By such additional heavy investment , business will be either more tough to profitable or swapping rate will be much higher to recover the cost of investment