The Equivalent of Fast-Charging EV Batteries

July 19th, 2011 by Nicholas Brown

Project Better Place is about developing an electric vehicle battery swapping system that can enable people to literally replace their battery packs in exchange for another one which was charged while it was at the Better Place swapping station.

In other words: While battery packs that other people dropped off are stored inside the swapping station and are being charged, you would drop off your old battery by driving onto a machine which then takes it out from underneath the car and installs a new one in the car in less than 5 minutes.

It then charges the old one that you dropped off so that it is ready to be installed when the next vehicle stops by for a replacement.

Even more simplified: A machine removes your old battery pack at the swapping station, installs a new one, and then charges the old one so that it can be installed in the next car.

In essence, you only borrow the battery to drive the car up to 100 miles and then return it to the station. The objective of this project is to avoid hours of charging when one’s battery runs out of energy. A long charge time exacerbates range anxiety because if you are running out of energy, you know that you will be stuck at a charger in public for hours. You may not even be able to find a charger at this time when they are just now being installed around the world.

Better Place announced that, next month, it will start selling an electric Renault sedan in Israel that is capable of undergoing the battery replacement process mentioned above. It says that the Renault will be 20% cheaper to own than a conventional gasoline-only car because gasoline is very expensive in Israel (about $8 per gallon).

Currently, the best alternative to battery replacement every 100 miles is long-range batteries that enable you to travel 300 miles per charge. These are extremely expensive compared to batteries that provide 100 miles of driving range, simply because bigger batteries are required to provide a longer range (since they store more energy).

The advantage of batteries with a 300-mile range is that the vast majority of people could drive to and from work and school every single day, run errands, and much more without stopping anywhere to charge. They would only need to recharge overnight.

Project Better Place appears to be an example of out-of-the-box thinking, though — this is a very unusual project that you wouldn’t expect from anyone (I certainly wouldn’t have thought of that). I will update you when I get more information on it’s progress.

Better Place’s main package offers 3 years of driving at 25,000 miles per year — including the cost of the car — for $46,000. It claims that this package is 35% cheaper than owning a gasoline-powered car for 3 years. Another package is for $36,000, which is the cost of the car plus $320 to $470 per month to drive the car 20,000-30,000 km per year. In the case of both packages, the price includes the installation of home charging stations.

As is the case with all new technologies (and ways to use existing technologies like this), Better Place will learn about the drawbacks of this arrangement and improve it in the future.

h/t Technology Review

About the Author

Nicholas Brown writes on CleanTechnica, Gas2, Kleef&Co, and Green Building Elements. He has a keen interest in physics-intensive topics such as electricity generation, refrigeration and air conditioning technology, energy storage, and geography. His website is: Kompulsa.com.

sola

[Yes, the article is mistaken, BP is not developing the system, it is in the final stages of commercialization, now they are starting to sell the service]

In my opinion BP’s offer is not good enough:
– The Fluence EV is quite expensive for its comfort level (and in comparisson with its petrol counterpart). They shoud have used Nissan Leafs (a quickdrop variant)
– The electric mile price is way to expensive
– The service plans are very limited and inflexible

They should provide cheaper EVs and pay-as-you-go plans at the very minimum to become apealing. Time will tell.
Anonymous

Doesn’t make sense to me.

(Better Place is not developing the system, they’ve had their system operational for some time. They are currently installing it in Israel and Denmark. But back to my argument…)

Swapping your battery for a charged one will not be cheap. A swap station will need real estate, machinery, staff, and a supply of pre-charged batteries. It’s going to be far cheaper to plug in while parked at home/work/school.

We’re likely to see 200 mile range EVs in the next very few years. We already have Level 3 chargers which can give you an 80% recharge in less than 20 minutes. For the occasional long trip one could drive 200 miles, stop 20 minutes, drive 160, stop 20, drive 160 for a 500 mile day with only two short stops. If you take only a few long trips a year that extra (coffee/check your messages/pee) stop won’t be as irritating as paying a bunch of extra money for a battery swap.

“Better Place’s main package offers 3 years of driving at 25,000 miles per year — including the cost of the car — for $46,000.”

A Nissan Leaf is $32,780 (before subsidies). The 2012 Leaf has a built in charger which can fully charge the batteries in four hours. A 240vac outlet should cost less than $2,000 to install. The Leaf uses 0.35 (or less) kWh per mile. 25,000 miles worth of electricity (at the US average of $0.1275/kWh) would cost $1,116. That’s $35,896 compared to $46,000.

Now, if ranges never exceed 100 miles then battery swapping might make sense. But betting against better batteries is not a risk I would take.