I have recently been taking a look at the electric vehicle industry and in so doing have been giving some thought to a solution to one of the biggest drawbacks to choosing an electric vehicle over a traditional one; the time it takes to recharge a battery. As it currently stands an electric vehicle can take up to 8 hours to charge when the battery is depleted. This means large downtimes for the driver which not only put a limit on the driver’s mobility, but also necessitate that the driver take long charge times into consideration when planning one’s travel. Much discussion has taken place revolving around the investment in fast charge stations which could provide a fast enough charge to travel roughly 40 miles off of 10 minutes of charging, but the drawback to this solution is that it is expensive and would still require a downtime of 10 minutes or more depending on how depleted the battery is.

An alternative to this that I take a look at today is the possibility of simply swapping out a depleted battery altogether in favor of a fully charged one at a battery swap station; sort of the electric vehicle equivalent of the gas station that traditional vehicles utilize. Some basic research tells me that this method is in fact already being utilized by a taxi business in China as well as being taken into consideration by Tesla, Inc. It has been reported that the battery swap done in China can be done in as little as four minutes. This is comparable to the downtime from driving one takes for fueling up a gas powered car that most drivers are familiar with now. Continue reading →