Battery Swap vs Fast Charging: VHS vs Betamax For Electric Cars?

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Battery Swap vs Fast Charging: VHS vs Betamax For Electric Cars?

Battery Swap vs Fast Charging: VHS vs Betamax For Electric Cars?

BY NIKKI GORDONBLOOMFIELD 1,257 views Mar 7, 2011
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To battery swap or fastcharge? Thats the question facing automakers worldwide as they decide on the best standard to adopt to charge the latest generation of electric cars. But just like the early days of video cassettes, a standard war is waging in which there can only be one winner. And despite the quicker, fully automated world of battery swapping the technology backed by RenaultNissan and Better Place is facing an uphill struggle to become the accepted technology for charging electric car batteries for long distance trips. Theoretically Perfect in a Perfect World Electric Car Navigation Gets Smart With... Just like the Betamax, BetterPlaces fast charge solution looks great on paper. It avoids the need for long charging stops and theoretically cuts down the time taken to replenish an electric vehicles range from the 30 or so minutes taken to fast charge a 2011 Nissan Leaf to well under 5 minutes. In order to achieve this however, the battery swap station has to have no queues and a fresh battery pack of the correct type waiting. It charges the batteries to full every time and ensures a full tested battery pack that will be of a guaranteed health. Its also better for the batteries: continued fast charging eventually prematurely ages a lithiumion battery pack. Battery swapping, with stations charging spent packs over hours rather than minutes helps reduce wear and tear but only in a perfect world of unlimited space, unlimited resources and fully integrated telematics between cars, batteries

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and swap stations. And thats the point. Just like Betamax, Battery swap stations are great: in a perfect world. Battery Homogeneity or Port Homogeneity? Sadly, the world isnt perfect. Nor is it one where cooperation is de facto.

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Battery Swap vs Fast Charging: VHS vs Betamax For Electric Cars?

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In order to make full use of battery swap stations, there has to be consensus on battery pack design, not just the design of the power inlet used to charge the car. In asking the automakers to work together on a standardized battery pack, car design becomes centered around the battery pack, not the function of the car. In turn, that centralized design process makes it dicult to design cars with longer ranges or specic purposes. In contrast, fast charging can be applied to any vehicle with a standardized inlet: power is transferred to an onboard battery pack which can take any shape and software controls power transfer. Port or inlet homogeneity means it is possible for battery packs to come in a variety of sizes and shapes and the design of the battery pack can be put wherever the cars designers feel there is space. Less Convenience, Less Space Creating a fastcharge network is less expensive than a battery swap station. It also requires less space, meaning a fast charge station can be put anywhere a parking lot exists. Battery swap stations require a dedicated space to remove, store and charge as many batteries as are needed to satisfy a continuos stream of battery swaps.

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better place battery switch station 006

Battery swapping 0. Fast Charging 2? Kind of. But the time taken to recharge using a fast charging station is much longer than the time it takes to replace a battery in a battery swap facility. It also doesnt actually recharge a battery to full, charging a battery to about 80% of its full capacity. These two factors give battery swap stations a major advantage over fast charge points.

better place battery switch station 005

The Final Nail

But the ultimate nail in BetterPlaces con is the ubiquity of plugging in and the way that we, the consumers, already know how to do it. Theres no specialised equipment necessary for daily mileages of less than 100 miles in cars like the 2011 Nissan Leaf. In fact, charging at night eliminates the need for recharging during the day at all. Sometimes, the more basic solution wins out, even if it isnt quite as good for our cars as the alternative could be. Without a doubt, fast charging is like VHS: technically awed and not quite as versatile as it could be. For now though, BetterPlace looks conned to places where it does work: large eets and small islands.

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Comments (11)
Michael Thwaite

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Posted: 3/7/2011 9:37am PST I think Better Place is absolutely perfect for eets of vehicles; City Taxi's, Post oce delivery vehicles... It's how they did it at the turn of the 19th century. Worked then,I guess we lost out way.
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Kent Beuchert
Posted: 3/7/2011 11:02am PST I disagree that BetterPlace makes any sense, anywhere. Right now BYD is running a eet of taxis and can recharge to a substantial battery capacity in 10 minutes, plenty fast enough. And as batteries get cheaper, the need for frequent recharge grows correspondingly less. It's hard to imagine any need whatsoever to articially assist the 300 mile Model S. Even long trips are no problem with that range combined with a negligible 45 minute recharge. It will have no need whatsoever for away from home recharges except during trips. BetterPlace makes sense only when batteries are extemely expensive, very slow charging, and leased to the owner and standardized by all the automakers. Absolutely none of those conditions now exist, nor does the rationale for BetterPlace.
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Battery Swap vs Fast Charging: VHS vs Betamax For Electric Cars?

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1056396_battery-swap-vs-fast-cha...

Lucjan Wilczek
Posted: 3/7/2011 12:43pm PST I work for a Private Ambulance company around Chicago land area, I want to say we easily put 100 + Miles on an ambulance in a day, the battery swapping technology would be perfect for that...
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By Alex Besogonov
Posted: 3/7/2011 1:01pm PST This analysis is awed. "Creating a fastcharge network is less expensive than a battery swap station. It also requires less space, meaning a fast charge station can be put anywhere a parking lot exists" That's totally not true. Not a lot of existing parking lots have enough power for fastcharging more than a handful (at best!) cars. You'll need about 20 kWt*hr of charge for 100 miles, that works out to stunning 40kWt (80Aat 500V!) for a SINGLE car. So a modest 30cars parking lot will require stunning 1.2MWt of power! So forget about fastcharging on any parking lot (though slow charging will probably be ubiquitous). In future, probably _both_ fast/slow charging and battery swapping will be used.
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By Kevin Sharpe
Posted: 3/7/2011 3:12pm PST Lucjan do you think this will be true when you have a 200 mile battery? IMO battery swap will only be useful while we wait for longer range batteries at an aordable price (in 5 to 10 years).
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By Kevin Sharpe
Posted: 3/7/2011 3:18pm PST Alex, why not simply trickle charge a local storage system? You don't have to take all 40kWt or whatever from the grid on demand. I also doubt that fast charge will be required 24/7, during the night the system could revert to Level 2 service while trickle charging the fast charge storage.
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Paul E.Appleton
Posted: 3/7/2011 4:14pm PST Our nation is a eet since we bought GM and our neighborhoods are many islands, coalesced.....thanks for making the BP argument!!
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By Alex Besogonov
Posted: 3/8/2011 2:59am PST "Alex, why not simply trickle charge a local storage system? You don't have to take all 40kWt or whatever from the grid on demand." Sure, it's one probable solution. But then you'll need to have a lot of local storage and batteries are expensive. So by the time you've nished your parking lot won't be cheaper than a battery swap station.
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By Tom Bassett
Posted: 3/8/2011 10:49am PST Looking at a 30 car fastcharging parking lot from a utilitie's perspective is fairly straight forward. Install

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Battery Swap vs Fast Charging: VHS vs Betamax For Electric Cars?

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a standard 750 KVA 3phase padmount transformer, typically 13.2kv to 277/480Y. Diversity and thermal capacity of OISC xfrmr easily handles duty. Could use a 1000 KVA pad to be conservative. Most utilities keep a few of these in their own local stock. Less than 53 amps primary current if all 30 cars charging (unlikely). Piece of cake for typical urban distribution network. Transformer footprint would be about 6' X 4' or about 1/2 a parking space.
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Christopher File
Posted: 3/8/2011 3:59pm PST Is there any reason they can't be both? It would be nice to have them fast charge yet have easy removal whenever the battery lifecycle has ended.
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By Bret
Posted: 3/8/2011 5:08pm PST There are two obvious reasons why I believe battery swapping is D.O.A. for consumers. 1. There's no way anyone is going to swap their $10K battery pack and risk getting one that is older or potentially defective. I denitely wouldn't if I had a new EV. 2. The battery pack should be an integral part of the car and add structural rigidity. Having a removable pack seems like it would add weight, reduce interior room and aect handling. It makes more sense for eet customers, where they own all of the batteries and use van type vehicles. But, they would still have to buy a lot of extra batteries and a swap station. That's a lot of money compared to buying a couple quick chargers.
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