A Game Changer in EV Battery Recharge

Swapping batteries in Taiwan. Picture from “Battery Swapping Stations in Taiwan” by PVJ Educational on YouTube

I previously posted about the benefits of Electric Vehicle (EV) battery exchange rather than waiting half an hour to get your battery recharged. I’m not the kind of guy who likes to hang around a recharge station — I prefer to fill up my tank in five minutes and be off.

A recent video story from BBC shows how battery exchange can be done quickly (like in a minute) based on the EV exchange system used for motor scooters in Taiwan. That country has 14 million motor scooters (not all EVs) with 10,000 battery exchange stations storing a million charged batteries. Imagine the impact on energy use and carbon emissions as that system spreads to other motor scooter-dominant countries like Indonesia (80 million scooters), Vietnam (45 million) and Thailand (20 million).

So, sounds good. And we know that battery exchange has been used successfully for forklifts in warehouses, etc., so where’s the “Game Changer?”

Here it is:

If we establish a national system of recharging EVs by battery exchange, YOU CAN BUY AN EV WITHOUT HAVING TO BUY A BATTERY! That makes two huge differences.

First it greatly reduces the cost of buying an EV. Let’s face it, they’re pricey and the battery alone represents about one-third of the cost of an EV. An article in Bloomberg states that batteries made up one-half…