Not sure about the cosmetics of this particular Nio, think it's some special edition as they don't all look like this, but the battery swap station size, connectivety, ease and speed seem pretty good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XecoMJE3Rw

I do like the idea older and faulty batteries get removed from the system and you can upgrade as and when new bigger batteries come into circulation, also the station scans the car for faults at every swap.

There's obviously some sort of charge for the service and I believe Nio's aren't at the cheaper end of the EV scale, I think they compete with Tesla over there.

Nio as a company have been involved with Formula E for a while. They seem certain to break out into North America sometime soon as they are listed on the NYSE, up 1500% in the last year though no where near as overvalued as Tesla stock.

Goudrons said:

It'll take a while to catch on internationally, but I like Nio's approach to the battery problem.

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Tesla already tried and ditched the idea. There are quite a few problems with the model like, who owns the battery, what if the battery gets damaged who’s liable, how does the owner retrieve the battery if the car is written off or stolen. Who/how do you pay for the battery.
What happens if you end up with a faulty battery that damages the car.

Then as tesla found out, it’s fine if you have only one model and one battery but throw in a number of different car models and then you need to store dozens of different batteries for dozens of cars.

I think this idea was what Renault where hoping for with their battery rental schemes but owners of cars didn’t want to be paying £300 a month for the car then another £150 a month for the battery. Even when the car was paid off the cost of the battery would continue for ever.

AndyRKett said:

Then as tesla found out, it’s fine if you have only one model and one battery but throw in a number of different car models and then you need to store dozens of different batteries for dozens of cars.

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Just because Tesla failed doesn't make it wrong. The Titanic sank but people still go on cruises.

Tesla obviously have different ideas about mass production, perhaps making different cars that take the same battery architecture might be more efficient and cost effective.

That's not my crazy idea, car manufacturers have been doing something similar for over a century. They would have gone bust long ago if they produced a different engine for each of it's models, let alone all the other cross model parts.

In fact, they are now at a stage where they have alliances with other manufacturers, the engine in my car is result of a Renault, Nissan, Daimlar, Mitsubishi, Dongfeng cross sharing agreement and they aren't the only ones with cross sharing alliances, they all seem to have one or more agreements.

Nio have 4 cars and another in the pipeline with 3 different battery outputs, 70, 84 and 100kwh, with another 150kwh battery in the pipeline.

All their batteries fit all their cars.
I believe a battery swap is less than £20 at the moment and if you buy one of their cars without a battery it reduces the cost by around £8000 with a "battery as a service cost" of around £100 a month, which is 6.6 years when compared to the cost of the car with a battery.

You aren't tied to the same battery, if it drops below 80% it is removed from circulation.
You also aren't tied to the same battery output, when the 150kwh comes on line, it'll fit the Nio you already have, futureproofing your initial investment in the car.

I think as Nio own the battery they'll be some insurance costs within the battery service agreement and I'm sure dividing costs in case of total insurance loss is easily done, insurance companies do that now with finance company interests, if you still owe on it they'll settle them first.

Not a bad business model for the EV user but it doesn't have to be the one and only, perhaps more of these cross sharing alliances is what EV's need, proper manufacturers getting together with a long term, multi faceted solutions that are cost effective rather than individual companies overtly bent on driving up their stock price and inflating their egos.

Different makes and models running the same motor and/or battery architecture would reduce production costs and increase research and development budgets moving EV's on further and faster (but if you have a standard battery, not outpacing what you already have).

Infrastructure like maintaining, charging, battery swaping and upgrading would become more standardised, widespread and far cheaper, but still profitable and more of a benefit of the end user.

Goudrons said:

Just because Tesla failed doesn't make it wrong. The Titanic sank but people still go on cruises.

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Quite a jump there. Let’s look at it another way, how often are people routinely getting a ship from Portsmouth to NewYork?

Cruises are for fun, the titanic was in essence public transport of its time these days everyone flys.

I don’t see people nostalgically swapping car batteries for fun in the future.

I literally own shares in NIO so I’m not knocking the company but it’s worth noting as yet it hasn’t made any money.

The concept of battery swapping may be used somewhere like China where people are 1 being forced to buy electric cars, 2 have very limited space to store or charge a car where they live.

Here however we’re not being forced to buy an electric car, it’s more organic and those buying them at the moment generally have somewhere to charge them, and might own another ice car if they want to do a much longer journey.

Also charging speeds have been jumping ahead and while they claim it takes just ‘3 minutes’ to change the battery. The actual time from start to finish is more like 10 and that’s assuming you don’t have to wait to get started. (Top gear did a whole article about it) new electric cars can add huge amounts of power in just 10 minutes and if you look about you’ll see (also in China) they have made a car that can charge to full in just 5 minutes.

The problem Tesla had was people favoured simply charging there car rather than swapping batteries. The battery warranty on a Tesla is really good and so if you buy one you don’t really need to worry about battery degradation, I don’t think even the oldest uk Tesla’s are out of their battery warranty yet.

The other issue is cost. The little stations are manned 24/7 by a little man who operates it. They have to keep and charge batteries for swaps which as you’ve pointed out are £8k a go and they need to take and repair faulty batteries, which could become faulty from being repeatedly swapped, banged about or contacts worn.

If they need to change the design of the battery because of a change in technology or say safety legislation then they’d need to redesign the station. How many supposedly “future proof” designs change within a few years?

It’s far cheaper and easier to charge a battery in situ than it is to have an expensive and complex machine to swap the battery

Costs about £10 to charge a car at home in the uk and you say it costs £20 to swap the battery. So they would need to be swapping a battery every hour just to cover the operators wages without paying for the spare batteries or machines, charging the batteries or repairing faulty ones.

A public charger in the uk costs about £30 to charge a car from empty to full, so this battery swapping set up is costing £10 a battery less than the cost of just charging the battery, in the uk you might expect a battery swap to cost you £50 even £60 and while it’s quick what happens if you get to the station and there is a fault and they can’t change the battery, you can always plug a plug in, and with future cars being able to charge in 5-10minutes, what’s the need for this?

NIO will need to ditch this tech if they ever want to make money, just like Tesla and others before them did. There is no need for it the cars I understand are really rather good.

There are no operators it fully automated, though I guess there will be operators that look after several stations which will be paid for in the service charge.

The stations take the space of two parking/charging spaces, although the swap itself takes a little over 3 minutes, the whole process takes about 12 start to finish, so they can "charge" up to 5 cars an hour from 2 spaces.

A Tesla S 100kwh which is comparable with a 100kwh Nio takes between 60 and 80 minutes to charge to around 80% on a 50kw charger, from a quick search there's only 4 of those within 6 miles of where I live, which is pretty much in the centre of London, so far less than 2 an hour can be charged from the same space that could charge many and swap 5.

In city centre locations where space is at a premium this utilises the space better and home charging for most city dwellers is virtually impossible. There are around 45 spaces on my road alone at not one of them can home charge on it.
My road isn't unusual, there are around 60,000 streets and roads within a 6 miles radius and they nearly all the same. Flats and appartments with limited zoned parking.

There's a fundemental fact there are limited spaces nearly everwhere. These spaces will need to be shared for charging and parking. Park in them and no one can charge, charge in them and no one can park, there has to be other options for EV's to be really viable for everyone.


I don't know how you have predicted the possible UK costs, I understand the average price of a Kw of domestic electricity is between 14p and 18p in the UK, so 100kw is between £14 and £18. 40 to 80% more than the £10 quoted and very much in line with a £20 battery swap. Ok, smaller batteries take less electricity and will cost less to charge, but that is hardly a like for like comparison.
But that's domestic price, a large company that buys lots of power will be able to negotiate cheaper rates.

You would think as Nio already have over 190 swap stations and performed over 2 million swaps any bugs would have already appeared and solutions found, which can't yet be said of the any future system like the 5 - 10 minute chargers.

The future has to untie the EV car from the socket at some point, for some of the time to be viable for everyone.
It's been done in the past and I can't see the future being any different.
Certain devices had to be plugged in to work, then they became battery operated and we binned those batteries when empty.
Then were fitted fixed rechargeable batteries within the device and now we can use seperate rechargeable batteries that are charged out of the device and swapped to give us the freedom to charge and use the device at the same time.

Nope there is an operator in every station, that adds considerable cost.

They can’t “charge” 5 cars an hour because of the limitation they only have so many batteries on site at any one time, they have to be checked and then charged before they can be put back on a car if taken off and the time taken to charge one of those batteries is going to be comparable to charging any other electric car battery. Apparently it’s less than 3 in an hour the station can actually manage but they have 5 batteries on site so if they changed all 5 batteries in the first hour of the day then you could be waiting a while when you arrive for your battery swap, if you’re there 6th customer.

As stated it’s expensive and complicated and if you could charge a car in a comparable time without all that complication and equipment then companies are going to prefer that as are customers, plug in, to charge, go get a coffee and leave with a full battery in the same sort of time it takes to fill a tank.

Battery swapping is not going to be a future technology people use

AndyRKett said:

Battery swapping is not going to be a future technology people use

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The future isn't here yet but the EV is.

Then again the future never gets here and we all know inductive reasoning allows for false conclusions.

But it is today that we produce batteries that power our devices, you can buy some in packets by the counter in supermarket checkouts. They are generally in standardised sizes that can be fitted quickly, with similar products in similar standard sizes that you take out when flat and replace with a charged one while you recharge the original one.

We have been storing power in batteries and swapping them since 1800 and there were some standardised sizes within a 100 years of that date.

We as a species generally like to standardise, there is rarely just one standard and we do like to disagree about which standard to use or which is best. (Me, I'm 5 foot 10 inches and 90 kgs ish!) and it isn't unheard of for one to win out over another, even though it might not be the best.

Also the more mobile a device is, the more flexibilty users have needed to keep them powered. Take the humble radio, mains, battery, solar, Trevor Baylis' wind up one, a crystal set even powered itself from the radio waves it received all add to make it as flexible as possible.

So to think it's a good idea to standardise EV battery sizes to make them interchangeable and make them more flexible to fill them with power, like Nio, isn't a million miles off what we've been doing with batteries for over 200 years.

If you consider a fixed in position, unstandardised size battery with only one way to add power to it, that's actually a rather large leap backwards.

I wonder how all those with "on street " parking are supposed to charge their car.
Perhaps all car parking bays should have a charging point in the supermarket ?
Why is it not mandatory that all new build houses have a charging point?

Goudrons said:

So to think it's a good idea to standardise EV battery sizes to make them interchangeable and make them more flexible to fill them with power, like Nio, isn't a million miles off what we've been doing with batteries for over 200 years.

If you consider a fixed in position, unstandardised size battery with only one way to add power to it, that's actually a rather large leap backwards.

Click to expand...

This just won’t happen, not because it’s not a sensible idea but because companies will never agree to make batteries all the same size, take companies like apple deciding to remove things like earphone sockets and SD Card slots from their products assuming that’s what people want then it causing problems for compatibility later. Then there are cars of all various shapes and sizes and a big part of electric car safety is keeping the battery safe from damage in an accident, because they get a bit explody

So a small car could not fit the battery if a big car, and vice verse, then there is cost. A small car like a fiat 500e only has a small battery come cars only have 24kw, but something like a £60k nio or £80 Tesla has a considerably bigger and more expensive battery. Should they be making huge battery packs for little cars with only a few batteries in them just so they can fit the same standardised dimensions of a big car battery... then have to make small cars much bigger.

Yes we’ve had AA batteries for decades now but in recent years how many new battery powered devices come with a built in battery you charge from a usb cable? You can even buy AA batteries that charge off a usb cable!

They will never standardised batteries, they’ve not even standardised ev charging cables or stations. Ultimately the future is looking like super rapid charging is going to be the easiest way forward because every car will have the ability to plug in and charge, even if you have to wait 10 mins for a rapid charge that’s still infinitely less complex than changing a battery on an ev. And charging is also not that far detached from what people are used to doing with phones, laptops etc. You don’t change your laptop battery when it runs low or your phone battery, you plug it in. And you get used to plugging it in at times you don’t need to be using it

I can see it happening.

EV's have been pretty specialist manufacturers until quite recently. Now the main stream manufacturers are getting on board, which to be honest, isn't that many.


How many different battery architectures and motors will say VW use for
Audi, VW, Seat, Skoda, Porsche products
or
PSA
or
Renault/Nissan/Daimlar Alliance
or
FCA
or
GM
or
Toyota, Daihatsu, Lexus
or
Ford, Lincoln, Troller.

Would say Ford spend billions developing their own systems or buy a company with a viable system already?
(that's why I hold Nio stock)

By way of sales, you'd only need say VW and Renault Alliance brands to get together and share EV systems to pretty much set the standard we'll use for the forseeable future.

I’m in the camp of not seeing myself in any electric car shape or form. Obviously they will eventually make headway and be the norm’ At my age I think I will dodge the “leccy”motors. Personally I think it’s going to be longer than anticipated before any kind of a change, especially so for the likes of up here. Rural areas have there own issues to content with.

I’m certainly in no hurry at all to be behind the wheel of a silent volt mobile...

So VW have literally just spent billions in the last 5 years developing it’s battery technology. Ford have also just committed to spending millions to develop there own technologies based on what they have already produced.

PSA have also again been working on and are now releasing there own technologies, so far non of the the above are sharing designs and in some cases are not even sharing the battery from one car to another l, take the Vauxhall corsa and the new electric version of the mokka. And the fact that the 500e is effectively now a PSA product.

Toyota is still playing with hybrids but has spent a fortune on its hydrogen fuel cell.

As it stands someone like VW is not using the same kit in an ID3 as they would in something like a porsche Taycan. I genuinely don’t see that ever happening it’s like saying you’d put a Lamborghini engine in a golf to save having to design a second engine for the golf. Different motor may require a different battery, and battery technology is improving so rapidly that a car made just two years ago could have a very different battery technology to a brand new car design. The new design may not be compatible with the older motor or electronics, because the batteries have computers in them that need to work with the car.

To standardise batteries across all manufacturers would be like asking Apple to make batteries that will work in a Microsoft surface laptop, or Samsung to make batteries that fit a Nokia phone, sure it might be convenient but who wants to limit the design of their car because of the shape of a battery,

If you own shares then you’ll know they have basically lost money since the beginning of 2021 and before that the only reason they gained so much in value was when the Chinese government bailed them out to the tune of about a billion dollars, and as I said before they have yet to make a profit.

Meanwhile someone like Tesla who have been in the market a bit longer have tried these things scrapped them and now at least are making some profits.

The 500e is a Pre-PSA product.
It's the last real FCA development.

The Pretender said:

The 500e is a Pre-PSA product.
It's the last real FCA development.

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I think we all know that, the point here is despite the merger being on the cards for a long time, they still pushed ahead with developing there own electric drive train rather than buying in from PSA knowing they would ultimately merge, or they could have bought batteries or motors in from someone else, they didn’t they built their own, and if (which I doubt) they decided next week to make a new all electric panda they’d likely use there own fiat 500 components as that would save costs now they have those parts

AndyRKett said:

I think we all know that, the point here is despite the merger being on the cards for a long time, they still pushed ahead with developing there own electric drive train rather than buying in from PSA knowing they would ultimately merge, or they could have bought batteries or motors in from someone else, they didn’t they built their own, and if (which I doubt) they decided next week to make a new all electric panda they’d likely use there own fiat 500 components as that would save costs now they have those parts

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The new Panda EV will share the 500e technologie and that is a good thing, IMHO.

I don't have any interest in a for the most part France FIAT.

Ford have tied up with Sanyo for some of it's battery techology, same as Suzuki.
For some other Ford products it's also using LG Chem along with GM, Renault, Hyundai and Volvo.

Some other Renault Alliance products are using Yuasa and Fiat's 500e is Bosch/Samsung.

Manufacturers are edging their bets so far and suppliers are keen to try and get a foot hold in the market as the dominant ones will pretty much set the standard.

But the worlds largest EV battery manufacturer is CATL who happened to have launched the battery swap service with Nio, followed by LG Chem and Panasonic.

These last three account for around 70% of the total market.

CATL and LG Chem seem to have attracted a few heavy hitters, so supply numerous large manufacturers between them.

Panasonic mainly supply Tesla and have teamed up with them to build one of the Tesla "Gigafactories" that build the batteries.
You would imagine Panasonic would need to branch out and supply others as more and more manufacturers cut in to Tesla's share of the market.

Though most technology will be pretty similar you would expect the dominant suppliers technology to be better supported and the better supported will be more attractive to buyers and thus to other car manufacturers.

Think back to Betamax, that was a Sony design but Sony soon turned to making VHS players and recorders as JVC licensed VHS for everyone to make, driving down the price for buyers which encouraged pretty much universal support for VHS.

At this point that's likely to be one or all of the top three, one of which is pretty much only supplying one manufacturer at the moment and the other two multiple manufacturers.

Not sure what you are getting at with any of that post, there is only so many factories that can make the quantities and quality of batteries needed for electric cars.

Tesla for example May work with Panasonic but they make “Tesla” batteries, and Tesla is always working towards making there own batteries as are companies like Ford.

In essence it’s fine to buy in nuts and bolts but someone like Ford need to not only own their own motor manufacturers but also there on battery plants going forward so they are not as susceptible to market changes.

The current situation of manufactures buying in motors and batteries, doesn’t mean they are not being made to the manufacturers designs and specifications it just means Ford don’t have a expensive machines and equipment fo make the batteries for thousands of cars (after all it’s still early days)

So at the moment companies are buying in, but all of them have got plans to switch to making there own.
Going forward all of these car manufacturers with have space in expensive engine manufacturing plants that will go unused as people move away from ICE engines. And the process for casting an engine block or a motor casing is not that dissimilar.

Tesla's Gigafactory 1 is a factory in Nevada that Panasonic and Tesla both invested in. It is staffed by both Tesla and Panasonic empolyees.

It makes Panasonic designed batteries badged "Tesla" for Tesla cars for the US and European market.

There is another factory in China for the Asian market and they have a battery procurement agreement with CATL.
So not even Tesla are doing what you presume they are doing.


The point I am getting at is there are many battery suppliers all working with and supplying different car manufacturers with differing approaches.

A couple of suppliers are already quite dominant in the market, CATL in particular. It is these few that will be most numerous and cost effective to produce and they will start to become the standard, the infrastructure around their use will be better supported and more and more car manufacturers will follow one way or the other.

It may be other suppliers and manufacturers won't sell enough to be profitable making their products expensive so the cars are more expensive and less supported so buyers look elsewhere.

If one or more of these suppliers is better, has more functionality and is just as cost effective it might give itself a further edge in the market.

They have also been buying in these parts more and more or the might have subsidiary companies supplying them (and others) with parts so they have little need to design and manufacture a lot of these parts themselves.

The end result will be similar to what we have now, car manufacturers selling you the same parts from a few dominant suppliers, just branded differently.

But it's not just cars, what parts are inside your iPhone or iPad or your Sony Vaio? Apple and Sony processors, Ram and Rom?
No, they just build these and use parts from one or two suppliers, Apple want you to think it's all theirs, but it isn't, the processor in an i12 is made by TSMC who also supply others who badge them a different name.

AndyRKett said:

Tesla for example May work with Panasonic but they make “Tesla” batteries, and Tesla is always working towards making there own batteries as are companies like Ford.

Click to expand...

You might want to tell Ford that.
https://fordauthority.com/2020/08/f...ies-from-suppliers-instead-of-making-its-own/

Goudrons said:

You might want to tell Ford that.
https://fordauthority.com/2020/08/f...ies-from-suppliers-instead-of-making-its-own/

Click to expand...

We can all post links to articles.... this one is newer

https://www.govtech.com/transportat...g-Its-Own-Electric-Vehicle-Battery-Cells.html

Also in that article

“ The company is "absolutely" looking at going into battery-cell production, he said — an abrupt about-face from the assessment his predecessor, Jim Hackett , offered investors just months ago.”

So no need to tell Ford, they already know.


Also Tesla ARE making there own batteries and have repeatedly said the key to lower cost electric cars is to be making there own factory, they may buy in from other companies but the long term plan is to make there own batteries to cut costs and also be able to build there own share of the battery market by selling to other car manufacturers. There are always firms that will buy in for example Vauxhall or Ford using fiat engines or at times sharing platforms or designs to cut costs to fill a whole in there line up.

Now it seems the argument has gone from whether or not swapping batteries will be the future over to who is or isn’t making batteries, all largely irrelevant to be honest and doesn’t effect me in the slightest if Ford makes or buys in a battery for a car.

But what is certain is that cars will not be made to use the same batteries any time soon.

Panasonic for example May make the batteries hut it’s usually the manufactures who put them together in packs.

I watched a video last night that hypothesised if in the future with growing battery technology we will see electric cars capable of 1000 miles range which would be perfectly possible, cars could do 1000 mile range with a big enough fuel tank but you carry more weight around unnecessarily and it costs a fortune to fill up. With electric cars the weight remains largely the same and the cost of top ups is fairly low, so a car with 1000 mile range might only need a charge once a month for most people and could be kept topped up with a plug in one day a week at the work or shopping centre carpark.

Battery swapping is not going to be a big thing for cars in the future. Maybe very large trucks? But the bigger the truck the bigger the battery so the more effort it is to replace. They already have electric ferries that can charge in the short time they are in dock so I see no reason why we’ll be pulling batteries going into the future