Battery swapping is a technology that could solve one key barrier for EV adoption: consumers’ range anxiety and the long waiting time for battery charging. Wouldn’t you feel more assured on a weekend trip if you knew you could stop at a swap station and replace depleted battery packs with fully charged ones in five minutes? But this isn’t easy to do, as Tesla and Better Place’s past failures. In China, however, battery swapping has been a reality for a couple of years. How did Chinese companies like Nio make it work with 2,300 swapping stations nationwide? What can companies outside China learn from the Chinese experience?
So I can give an example. Here in Taiwan, Gogoro has put up a lot of battery swap stations for their electric scooters. When you buy the scooter, it comes with removable batteries which you can charge on your own. Or, you can buy a monthly subscription on top of it that gives you access to those battery stations, where you can ride up to one and swap a pair of freshly charged batteries into your scooter. Subscription price is tiered by Ah per month, if you go over the limit you pay extra per Ah.
In this case, yes I think Gogoro is in charge of maintaining/replacing old batteries. Subscription is separate from the scooter cost, so buying used should not affect your ability to subscribe to the plan.
I love that system
so it is your battery and got additional batteries you can swap on the road with a subscription? That looks promising.
However, this works for scooters is because the battery pack is small enough for hand carry and install. It won’t be on typical 4-wheel vehicles as those are about a thousand pound. Even if we can modular and miniaturize it like how Gogoro does, where to install it is a big problem. Obviously we can’t install it in the front compartment as that will be a fire hazard when crash.
No, you don’t get additional batteries. Once you start using the swapping service, the battery that came with your scooter goes into circulation. I suppose when you decide to stop subscribing to the service, the batteries that you have currently will be yours to keep. (I don’t own a Gogoro btw)
Yeah, and I agree that this system works great with scooters but not for cars.
Shame. It will be nice if I get a set of batteries I know well when the scooter used less frequently and charging at home makes more sense. Rather gambling on what’s the quality/wear level of the next set will be.
Guess that’s how they introduce new batteries into the system, and cost them lesser. As long as there are new scooter owners and using the service, there will always be new batteries entering the circulation. All they have to do is pull out old batteries not fit for using out of the loop, and maybe repurpose them for something else, like grid power storage system.
You shouldn’t need to worry about getting bad batteries. Since it’s priced at an Ah/month basis (there are also km ridden per month plans), you can swap batteries whenever you feel like it. It is on Gogoro to maintain the health of the batteries, and swap in new ones when they go bad (or upgrade battery versions!).
That’s the idea!
I mean when I use the scooter less frequently (maybe I got a bigger car) or live somewhere else doesn’t have the station, thus canceling the subscription. On that, I guess I will be stuck on the last battery set I swapped in.
Ah I see. So I took a quick look at their contract and some articles, the ownership of the batteries is with Gogoro during your plan, and they give you the option to pause this plan (30 days minimum a time, 90 days max per year). If you decide to pause or cancel the plan, you will have to return the batteries you currently have, and they will give you spare batteries in return. I don’t think you’ll be guaranteed good batteries either way.
Lol. I buy a new vehicle, put new batteries into the circulation, and when I terminate, I got an old set they specify which I have no idea what the wear level is. If I got to keep the last set swapped in, I atleast know how good/bad it performs.
No thanks.