EV Battery-Swapping Startup That Raised $330 Million Files for Bankruptcy (inc.com)
- Reference: 0180428255
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/12/20/0733202/ev-battery-swapping-startup-that-raised-330-million-files-for-bankruptcy
- Source link: https://www.inc.com/chloe-aiello/battery-startup-charging-evs-bankruptcy-ample/91280758
They just [2]filed for bankruptcy, reports Inc :
> Ample was founded in 2014 with a goal of "solving slow charging times and infrastructure incompatibility" for commercial EV fleets such as those in logistics, ride-hailing, and delivery, the filing states. To-date, Ample has raised more than $330 million across five rounds of funding to finance research and development and deployment. Rather than tackling fast charging, its strategy involved developing "fully autonomous modular battery swapping," capable of delivering a fully charged battery in just five minutes. The technology requires purpose-built "Ample stations" that look a little like carwashes. A car is guided into the bay and elevated on a platform. A robot then identifies the location of a car's battery module, removes it, and replaces it with a charged module, [3]Canary Media reported .
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> The company also boasts partnerships with Uber, Mitsubishi, and Stellantis, and notes it has deployed its technology — or is pursuing deployment — in San Francisco, Madrid and Tokyo. Even so, it ran up against funding issues. In its filing, Ample attributed its bankruptcy to macroeconomic and industry headwinds, such as "severe supply chain disruptions," "contraction in both public and private investment in renewable energy" and the "reduction, delay, or redirection of government incentives intended to accelerate EV adoption." The filing notes that regulatory and permitting delays slowed its launch in international markets, after which access to capital foiled its scaling efforts. The company eliminated all but two full-time, non-executive employees after formerly employing about 200...
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> [4]Electrek noted that Ample is the second battery swapping startup to go bankrupt after California-based Better Place in collapsed in 2013 amid financial issues related to how capital intensive it was to build infrastructure, [5]Reuters reported . And Tesla briefly pursued the concept, [6]building a station in California, before ditching the idea altogether.
Ample "claimed to have designed autonomous battery swapping stations that would be rapidly deployable, cheap to build, and could adapt to any EV design with a modular battery which would be easy for manufacturers to use," [7]notes Electrek 's article :
> Where this bankruptcy leaves Ample's technology is unclear. Another company could snap it up and try to do something with it, if they find that the technology is real and useful. Ample had gotten investments and partnerships [8]with Shell , [9]Mitsubishi and [10]Stellantis , for example, so the company wasn't alone in touting its tech. Or, it could just disappear, as other EV battery swapping plans have before...
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> That's not to say that nobody has been successful at at implementing battery swap, though. NIO [11]seems to be successful with its battery swapping tech in China, though the company [12]did miss its 2025 scaling goals by a longshot . But as of yet, this is the only notable example of a successful battery swap initiative, and it was done by an automaker itself, rather than a startup claiming to work for every automaker.
Electrek's writer is "just not bullish on battery swapping as a solution in general. Currently, the fastest-charging vehicles can charge from 10-80% in about 18 minutes. While that's longer than 5 minutes, it's not really a terrible amount of time to spend during most stops."
Plus, if cars come and go in 5 minutes instead of 18 minutes, "then you're going to have more than triple the throughput at peak utilization." And Ample's prices would be about the same as normal EV quick-charging prices...
[1] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/06/25/2116235/can-ev-battery-swaps-be-as-fast-as-filling-up-a-gas-tank
[2] https://www.inc.com/chloe-aiello/battery-startup-charging-evs-bankruptcy-ample/91280758
[3] https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/ev-charging/startup-ample-says-it-can-swap-an-ev-battery-in-five-minutes
[4] https://electrek.co/2025/12/19/another-ev-battery-swapping-company-is-going-bankrupt/
[5] https://www.reuters.com/article/business/environment/electric-car-company-better-place-shuts-down-after-burning-through-850m-idUS3895319175/
[6] https://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/19/tesla-launches-battery-swap-station.html
[7] https://electrek.co/2025/12/19/another-ev-battery-swapping-company-is-going-bankrupt/
[8] https://electrek.co/2018/08/06/shell-invest-startup-ample-electric-cars-for-everyone-charging-tech/
[9] https://electrek.co/2023/07/25/ample-announces-global-partnership-mitsubishi-fuso-battery-swap-electric/
[10] https://electrek.co/2023/12/07/stellantis-partners-with-ample-to-integrate-battery-swap-capabilities-into-its-evs/
[11] https://electrek.co/2024/08/06/nio-eclipses-50-million-battery-swaps-drivers-prefer-the-charge-method/
[12] https://electrek.co/2024/08/06/nio-eclipses-50-million-battery-swaps-drivers-prefer-the-charge-method/
Not enough money adn wrong market. (Score:2)
The best way to try this would be to build an Electric Bus company and also build stations designed to replace the Bus battery.
Then sell both to cities. Once you have the stations up and running, offer deals to car companies to use the same station for free. (The car companies get the service for free, the car owners would have to pay to replace the battery)
But trying to build a battery replacement system when cars are not designed to have their batteries replaced is stupid.
As expected (Score:3)
Battery swapping is bad for many reasons
Batteries are big and heavy and often integrated into the structure of the vehicle. Making them swappable requires more weight and complexity.
The swapping robot is also big, complex and expensive and keeping it maintained is difficult
Battery quality varies, you may get swapped a dud
This is the worst possible solution to the problem
Re: (Score:2)
Fair points, but one comment:
> Battery quality varies, you may get swapped a dud
There are ways to monitor the health, age, and usage of a battery. Sort of like the odometer and other service monitors in a car. If swapping catches on, I would expect to see such battery monitors become ubiquitous, and attached right to the battery.
Re: (Score:2)
It's also convenient for many reasons
You don't think they can manage to redesign a car that accepts a standardized component such as a battery?
Swapping can be a drive in, drop the battery and be pushed/pulled one car length forward to pick up the charged battery. Or the old and new battery are rolled under the car on a conveyor and the new is picked up by the car.
As the battery charger business they would not want not have customers stuck with a dead battery a mile down the road. Even your cheap phone kn
Turned out to be a non issue (Score:3)
Battery ageing isn't turning out to be nearly as bad as predicted and is getting better all the time, the batteries today will be the worst ones produced. Chemistry, cooling, BMS and construction are all improving every year I think we are already close to having 70% capacity for 200k miles which is pretty inline for ICE engines (which also lose MPG with age and cold).
Now to be clear if it's me in charge I am making a law that batteries have to be replaceable but swappable for consumer vehicles is a dead end. Commercial and industrial I think there's more of a case.
Re: (Score:2)
> Battery ageing isn't turning out to be nearly as bad as predicted and is getting better all the time, the batteries today will be the worst ones produced.
What makes you think that EV manufacturers will optimize their profits by both penny pinching battery production cost (making them worse) while at the same time also profiting from selling replacement EVs sooner (than if the battery had survived for longer). We may soon pass (or have already passed) "peak battery lifetime".
Re: (Score:2)
Customer demand, they are improving battery ageing because it's a thing customers care about. Why do car companies now with gas cars use "reliability" in advertising? Why are they pointing out the battery packs have a long warranty? Why is the drivetrain warranty longer than the general one?
Cars are still a competitive market, reputation matters. We all know Toyotas are more dependable than Dodge.
I could even take a different cynical approach where they want long lasting batteries so they can double and
one falls another rises (Score:2)
Ample may have failed, but perhaps Samething or Goompere will find success.
Probably the reason the company failed was that they did not fully embrace AI.
Just not much of an issue (Score:3)
for local trips I don't go to high speed charging stations. honestly if we focused more on level 2 chargers being ubiquitous that would be far more effective for folks who can't charge at home. If every restaurant, bar, grocery store, movie theater, had level 2 chargers you would be able to easily keep your car topped up and at a much lower cost than the high speed chargers.
When I use high speed chargers it is for road trips and saving time would be nice, but my car does 20-80 in 18 minutes on a good charger. With the upcoming generation of cars that will be the standard and some coming out are going to be even faster. I rarely have to stop for long enough to go to the bathroom and grab a snack and if the folks who can't charge at home had more ubiquitous access to L2 charging they wouldn't be relying on these high speed chargers either.
All of this is to say that the batter swap, which would still take time, just doesn't have the consumer advantage. Add to that the overhead of the infrastructure and the need to get multiple companies standardized and it's just not going to be a thing. It might have had legs if charging had stayed as slow as it was on the old EVs but that is just not the case
Betamax vs VHS (Score:2)
Nissan/opel wanted to do this decades ago. I'm thinking they cannot agree on a standard.
There are no "slow charging times" any more (Score:2)
On a journey, I just precondition my battery (heat it up by pressing a button), and stop for a coffee. The charging is often done before I get back to the car. This is the case 90% of the time. There are peak times when charging speeds are reduced and I have to wait for a bit. A different problem, is that some chargers have a penalty for an over-stay, so it pays to be alert. In other words, the charging is too fast.
No thank you. (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine driving off the lot with a new EV, and swapping your brand-new battery for some *used one*, from god-knows-where, when that battery is half the value of the entire vehicle. No, thanks.
And if this practice ever comes to pass, I hope companies like CarFax note and heavily ding the vehicle for having it's most major component swapped out when it was just days old. With an ICE vehicle, that would be considered like a **major** collision, and nobody would rightfully touch this car.
Re: (Score:3)
There are just so many problems with the component swapping model.
1. Age of components. As you pointed out, old components could be swapped for new, or vice versa. The way this would be addressed is to reconceptualize the battery hardware as being a consumable like gas, so that it does not comprise a significant portion of a car's value. But that's a difficult sell: it's like saying an ICE gas tank is consumable when it's the gasoline it holds that's consumed.
2. Compatibility of swapped components. H
Re:No thank you. (Score:4, Insightful)
> This idea has always smelled like a scam--a bad faith argument pushed by EV proponents to try to convince people to buy or invest in EVs now.
I disagree with the bold bit. This has never been a thing people serious about EVs have pushed. This is a thing that folks that hate the idea of EVs have pushed as "if they did this, then I'd suddenly be interested." The companies that have (claimed to) make an attempt at it were always scam artists pandering to that crowd, not the people who like EVs and understand them.
That all said, if there was a major manufacturer of fleet trucks and they designed their vehicles for this and had a division rolling it out, that'd be a different thing. A monoculture of hardware, the ability to track inputs and outputs (the "my brand new battery just got replaced with one that's nearly EoL!") and tooling... along with massive battery packs meant for long hauls... that could potentially make sense. But given drivers have limited road-hours per day by law... I'm skeptical even there.
Re: (Score:2)
You're absolutely right, and it sucks that I fell for that trap.
In regard to long-haul trucking, I think there's some merit to the idea of having swappable batteries, since presumably the capacities are larger than in consumer vehicles. But since truckers are already spending stretches of time at rest stops, the benefit is incremental, as you noted.
Along those lines, there might be applications for taxi fleets--short range personal transit where the vehicles are all uniformly the same and operated out of a
Re: (Score:2)
They were going after the fleet market, which seems like a pretty good idea. However, if they weren't able to make a clear demo site that could show value to a large customer with $330M, they are lacking something fundamental. That is either a clear vision of their target, trying to sell to too many customers at once, or straight up fraud/embezzlement. All of those issues come down to poor management, which seems to be par for the course in startups nowadays. It's surprising that the pitch doesn't include A
Batteries Not Included. (Score:3)
You will buy a new EV without a battery, and start a subscription for battery swaps - the battery age won't matter since the next one will also be a short term rental, and the next, and so on. You won't actually own or purchase a battery, stop being obtuse.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't want to subscribe to a battery.
Re: (Score:3)
> Imagine driving off the lot with a new EV, and swapping your brand-new battery for some *used one*, from god-knows-where, when that battery is half the value of the entire vehicle. No, thanks.
This is the kind of thing that makes zero sense for regular consumers (for exactly the reason you mention), but it could be a great system for companies that operate a large number of cars internally, e.g. UPS/FedEx/USPS, or even car rental places, where a returning electric car can be ready for re-deployment in far less time than it would take to re-charge them the conventional way.
At least fleet cars would keep re-using their own batteries instead of receiving someone else's potential garbage.