I have never understood why Governments didnt legislate for a universal battery pack standard?
In other words, we know that battery driven vehicles have two significant problems – the range is too short for most people, and the batteries are relatively slow to charge.
If you could drive into any garage, drop your battery pack, and load a new charged pack, these problems would seem to disappear.
In other words, you would rent the battery pack, rather as you might rent a gas bottle, paying effictively a deposit for the first pack that came with the car. The shape, method of securing the pack and means of contact would be universal, but the flexibility would remain to improve the technology within the pack, as this improves, without the need to redesign the other elements. The packs would largely be recharged within the existing petrol station network, and there would be much reduced need for a host of “points” around Cities and car parks.
I havent thought about how the logistics would work. I guess the discharged packs would accumulate during the day towards peak times when people would normally refuel their vehicles, with the bulk of stock, building up towards the end of the day, and entering the recharge cycle for the next day. What would be the through put at a large motorway station, but would this have a significant impact on the floating stock if batteries could be turned around in 30 minutes or so.
There must be many good reasons why this isnt a better solution to the current and future shortcomings of every vehicle having to charge its own pack?
1. Dimensions. It’s not small battery pack that you can easily pull out and put new one instead.
2. Capacity. You don’t need (and you want get) same package for small city car and e.g. Tesla.
3. Technology. You can’t compare Tesla battery with much more advanced Rimac (from Croatia 
).
4. Logistics.
5. Who knows what else…
Emir – some excellent points. But .. ..
Divide each pack into two universal parts, so smaller cars take one, larger two, vans three.
I agree some manufacturers will argue we have the better batteries, but in reality wont they all gravitate towards a common formula. After all isnt the battery pack in most of the computers we use pretty much the same now?
It seems to me its the same old interests, every laptop could have a common form snap in battery pack, but they dont – guess why? In reality ar least with the disk drives because there are so few manufacturers competing for the same laptop assemblers disks have a single common form – and its only Apple that weld the disk to the board (now) to prevent snap in, snap out changes.
Surely, common form and standard is good for the consumer and good for the planet? Of course I understand the car manufacturers would not want it because it isnt good for them.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
we know that battery driven vehicles have two significant problems – the range is too short for most people, and the batteries are relatively slow to charge.
It’s not really a problem. The average car drives 30-50 km each day, and do this 95% of the time. Charging at home (during the night) and/or work (during the day), and 95% of the all the charging can be done with only a few amps and a tiny battery. I have had an electric car for 4 1/2 year now, and the first thing you notice, you are never at a gas station anymore, and also how ridiculously seldom you use a fast charger.
Maybe in the future we will get super high energy density in non rechargeable batteries. Then cartridges could be a thing?
I think the way “society” tends to run is that every commercial entity goes for “proprietary everything” because that is how you maximise profits. Then, if the activity becomes economically/socially dominant (or there is a “central government” which has rulemaking as one of its mandates, such as the EU legislature) you get legislative moves to standardise things “for the good of the people”. The next stage is for the industry players to try to circumvent the new regs, which e.g. was successfully done with phone chargers, where a voltage was standardised but the connector wasn’t
Currently electric vehicles are in their infancy, and many argue they are likely to remain a marginal activity, due to all the reasons already discussed. Even distance commuting could be solved – albeit only with 3 phase ~50kW chargers at home, concurrently with a massive digging-up of all the streets and a massive power station building programme. Swappable battery packs would enable the power provision to be concentrated to the “battery pack swapping stations”.
I suspect we are a long way away before these issues crystallise sufficiently for the govts to do anything about it. The power stations don’t exist, for a start.
@Fuji_Abound, Lucas special projects back in the late 70’s or early 80’s were doing exactly this. From their base in Sparkhill, Birmingham they drove a convoy of electric vans (Bedford vans )and an Ogle designed taxi to London down the M1. I was privaleged to know the team behind them especially its leader a wonderful free thinker called Jeff Harding VC. I remember well filming one of these electric vehicles, set out in the rear with luxury passenger seating, up and down the boulevards of Paris.The battery pack was slung underneath the vehicle, held in place by pins. A flat bed jacking device was pushed under the vehicle and raised slightly to take the weight off and the pins were removed. The jack was then lowered
and the batteries were wheeled out and a charged set was put in place in a reverse action. It took only a few minutes. A number of these vehicles were trialled in UK cities, I don’t know why it didn’t catch on.
LeSving wrote:
It’s not really a problem. The average car drives 30-50 km each day, and do this 95% of the time.
Thats a good thing, because it would reduce the times packs would be changed over.
However I understand the single reason most given for the poor uptake is that when people do longer journeys they arent prepared to invest in a vehicle that requires them to stop for over 30 minutes for a charge, assuming a charge point can be found.
As Peter rightly states, it seems to me the cost and sense of everyone installing 3 phase makes little sense.
It may, or may not come in time, but it seems to me once you have some volume of “non conforming” cars, it becomes increasingly difficult to adopt a stand – so by then it may well be too late.
Perhaps it is an opportunity missed.
Gallois – that is very interesting.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
As Peter rightly states, it seems to me the cost and sense of everyone installing 3 phase makes little sense.
There is no need for this, no market demand, no nothing. It’s a “solution” or a “problem” only in someones head If you have the money, you certainly could though, and it wouldn’t cost you more than say 5-10k (just guessing). What every home can do is to install a 32/64 A single phase charger. This costs typically 1-2k (not guessing, lots of companies delivers this) and this is more than enough to charge even the largest batteries from zero to max during the night.
In Norway the market share of fully electric vehicles has reached 50% now. I’m soon to get my second electric car. You cannot look at charging as a 1 to 1 replacement thing for filling gas. It just doesn’t work that way. You operate (charge) an electric vehicle very different than you would operate a traditional car in this respect.
It’s because the pack is expensive and subject to wear depending on owner’s charging habits. I would not want to swap my pack for another one. Quick pack swap was demonstrated by Tesla years ago. Model S is capable of swapping the battery in a minute or so. All screws are on the underside and can be unscrewed with a robot. There just isn’t any need for it. Most of the time one charges at home. On longer journeys, new vehicles reach peak 250kW charging rate. That’s fairly quick if you accept charging to say 70%, not 100%.
Model S battery swap demo:
250kW charging:
In the 2.5 years of electric car ownership, I have driven nearly 50K km. I have only supercharged three times, the first was to show my wife how to do it, the second was because I needed it because of unplanned detours, the third time because we were having dinner at the place next to the supercharger. I charge at night at home.
Elon Musk asked if any of the existing car manufacturers wanted to invest in the supercharging network he started to build and share access. None did.
There is definitely a difference in battery management between the manufacturers. Simply swapping battery packs even between cars of the same brand is not evident. Having access to chargers and planning your trip is essential. We pilots know this.
