If that's from empty then for a typical EV battery of around 60kWh capacity that implies a charge rate of 360kW (about 50% more than Tesla's current biggest "superchargers"). Large-scale support for that is going to create quite a logistical challenge for charging stations (as well as needing some fairly chunky cables).

Don't try this at home, kids!

But the electricity companies will love all the extra potential peak demand they create! And this will go on until the subsidies run out and new ones for fuel cells become available: kWh/kg/litre or similar is the metric we should be using.

Or you could have replaceable batteries.

Or even just use batteries to store charge for people who really are in a hurry and charge (get it?) a little more while charging others more slowly at whatever rate you can get for a decent price.

Replaceable batteries is not an easy task.

Apart from extracting the custom shaped battery pack from the vehicle in an easy and timely manner, just imagine the H&S issues with 400 volt (or more) high amperage connectors on flying leads in the hands of minimum wage numpties? Stand well back!

Do try this at home kids

Well, you try it only once ...

Apart from extracting the custom shaped battery pack from the vehicle in an easy and timely manner, ..."

Not to worry. The same designers who make components on Internal Combustion engines so easy to replace once fitted to the vehicle are on top of it.

Pte Frazer time... "We're Dooooooomed!!!"

In fairness, Tesla demonstrated a fast battery swap. Once. In California. In order to harvest a healthy additional subsidy on every vehicle they sell there. But they don't actually offer a battery swap service at their charging stations. Presumably because you don't need to offer the service to get the subsidy.

Actually, internal components of IC engines ARE easy to replace. The only hard part (which isn't very hard at all) is making sure the tolerances are correct.

How about a backup battery dropped in the boot? Not a full charge version but something 'portable' that will get you another 50 to 100 miles or so? Only take a minute or so to swap out.

Mehh just wait for the EU to mandate USB-EV or USB-EU as the standard interface for EV batteries.

Replacement battery stations are illogical.

Would YOU want your brand-new, just purchased last week, only charged once battery (which can easily be 40% of the total cost of the vehicle) replaced with one that's on its 1,000th charge cycle?

How about a batteries not included model. You buy the car without battery, the dealer kindly fits you one for a modest price, which is not guaranteed new, but a guaranteed minimum capacity.

The battery-swap shops handle inventory, either offering the faded packs to those who don't need a big charge at that moment for some discount (2-tier battery-swap shop), else throwing them into the recycling system once they are less than the minimum mandated max capacity (1-tier battery-swap shop). BaaS.

Would you purchase a brand new phone sans battery, and have the dealer fit an old, used battery?

Bad comparison.

If your phone lasted but a few hours before needing a recharge, then a replaceable battery would give you instant power again. What difference does it make if you swap it for a 1 cycle battery or 100 cycle battery, assuming you're guaranteed a minimum say 80% capacity? Furthermore you're assuming a typical modern phone where batteries aren't (easily) replaceable, so no you wouldn't expect the dealer to fit the battery, you could do it yourself. Again, difference being you can take away a new phone, without battery, to the battery-swap shop. How are you planning to take your batteryless EV to the swap shop?

As it is, phones typically last a day, then you let it charge overnight which is a convenient cycle. Cars can be the same, but when you step out of the standard commute routine then it's nice not to have to stop for an hour every 4 hours to charge.

I note that you very carefully side-stepped the question. I'll ask it again.

Would YOU buy a brand new phone and have the dealer put an old battery of unknown provenance in it?

Edit: Now THAT was a strange typoe ...

If the price was right, yes

Because if the dealer can fit a battery, so can another dealer at a different time. And so on and so on. So my daily used and charged three and half year old S9 could behave a lot better than it does now with a simple battery swap.

So your question shouldn't be so much about whether you'd be happy with a battery of unknown providence, but whether you'd be happy with it for now .

As was mentioned above, if batteries came with a guarantee of 80% capacity minimum then, sure, that's potentially a fifth less. But in few years of use your fixed custom battery won't be looking so great, so maybe that 80% would be attractive. It would also, no doubt, be quite a boost to the second hand market as well.

"So your question shouldn't be so much about whether you'd be happy with a battery of unknown providence, but whether you'd be happy with it for now."

It's the same question, really. My existing battery will take me (say) 300 miles on a charge. How can I be absolutely certain the swapped (used) one will take me the same? The difference in range between 150 miles and 125 miles might not seem all that great to you, but to me it means running out of power between Cloverdale and Healdsburgh on the way home to Sonoma. Why would the proverbial Thinking Man accept this as "normal"? (The far end of this particular road-trip is an off-grid property with no provisions for charging electric cars.)

Especially seeing as the swap-station gets a brand-new battery in exchange for an older one. Sounds lucrative, to me.

In addition to whatever technical problems exist with replaceable batteries, there's this economic problem.

A large part of the cost of an EV is the battery. And batteries get tired over time -- especially if they are abused by whatever it is their particular chemistry doesn't tolerate well. Too many quick charges. Too many deep discharges, etc. So if you haul into the charging station with your brand new Whizbang Dominator and swap out the battery. You may get out of there in a few tens of seconds. But if you've you've swapped a brand new battery for a battery that is near end of life and worth a tiny fraction of the battery you exchanged for it, you're also leaving with your wallet many thousands of dollars/euros/pounds/drachma lighter.

Maybe there's a way around that, but I'm not sure what it is.

Oh yeah. And I doubt your new car warranty covers that replacement battery. Or any damage it might cause if it fails before your next swap.

Those 350kW jobbies I think already use water cooled cables.

And bus bars for cable wires.

In the UK, houses will have 60A fuses in older houses / flats and 100A in newer houses.

So in the best case and at 240VAC, that's 240 x 100A = 24kW peak for the whole house. There is no way that anyone will upgrade the whole grid to provide such large currents so there is no way anything like this will end up on domestic households, so its not a solution for the vast majority of potential customers. Notwithstanding the need for a whole bunch of new power stations (nuclear) to cope with the vastly increased loads for cars and domestic heating that is also supposed to be going on the same bits of copper wire in your house.

So, if its not in your house, then where ?

Would I want to go to a fuel station and have the same sort of crazy high power flowing into a couple of cars a lane away from the petrol / diesel pumps - no thanks. What about the heat generated during charging ? Will the car be driveable immediately after charging, or will the batteries need time to cool ?

I'd be interested to see what the lifespan of these batteries will be since we all know that phone batteries, tablets and laptops that use lithium batteries only have a 3-5 year span. So, what will the used car of the future look like with dead batteries that only go 20 miles or suddenly go from 100% to 10% in seconds.

I already suggested that future charging stations will need either a small nuclear reactor or gas/coal power plant next door to provide the needed energy. We're quickly heading towards 1MW per charging port and a station will need at least 20MW or more.

Still no help for those who live in terraced housing i n UK. No cables across the pavement: parking nowhere near your home. Leccy installed c 1948 in the pavements so no upgrades there ( pie-in-the-sky charging pads embedded in the road)

Basically we ' plebs ' ( nod to B de Pfeffel J) are no longer supposed to have vehicles...unless you are lucky enough to live in Primrose Hill or Dulwich - in which cse you will be looked after...

We were going to install a charger on Hob's Lane in London but when that power level was revealed, Professor Quatermass warned us not to run it in case it repeated earlier problems.

I was born and brought up in a terraced house in Dulwich, it's not all poshos.

Isn't Dulwich where the Elder Gods stalk their prey?

I refer you to something I read earlier:

"DARPA wants to refuel drones in flight – wirelessly"

Just avoid the shimmering air as you walk down the street.

Cable size can be managed by "step up" intelligent voltage control, like USB-PD. With USB, the current in the wires is limited by increasing the voltage, so that you never have to send more than 5A through the Type C connector's power wire (but you do it at 20V).

So the basic Tesla super-duper-charger provides 480VDC, so by the magic of Ohm, we can calculate that they're carrying up to 520A on those cables with the 250KW charging service. We can easily double that by using 1000VDC supplies, but now we have the step-down thermal losses to consider...

... but we're anchored to the ground infrastructure (by definition), so it's not unreasonable to consider a charging system that provides power _and_ a coolant loop, so heat dissipated by the charging circuit becomes the charger's problem, not the vehicle's.

(Tesla chargers mechanically lock the connector before becoming live, so the risks are controlled. Theoretically!)

The Chinese are just starting to produce "normal" Li-ion AA form factor cells (with voltage regulator circuit to give "constant" 1.5V output).

I'd love to see Enovix's technology packaged like that.

I have a mental image of pulling into the service station, flipping your car upside down, opening the battery compartment, and pulling out & replacing 5000x AA batteries, one at a time.

And woe betide you if any of them are installed the wrong +/- way around.

Or if the little plastic lock tab that holds the battery cover closed should break.

Heh, yeah. But that *is* what a Tesla model S battery pack looks like, except 18650 instead of AA cells and 444 to a rectangular pack.

Unfortunately, it turns out the Enovix solid silicon electrode isn't amenable to packaging in any cylindrical format, which is why they're going after things that can take a prismatic battery (EVs, laptops, phones, smart glasses)

And the crosshead screw holding in place needs a smaller screwdriver than you've ever seen.

In a full-sized car, Shirley that'd be LARGER than you've ever seen.

And it's not a Phillips, it's a Frearson.

Gives a whole new meaning to Rolling brownouts and blackouts.

the days when Elreg “journalists” didn’t read and then rewrite company press releases.? And the commentards didn’t bite?

Good times.

Cheers… Ishy

This has made it to production!

Excellent!

Yes, it's nice to see a story about new battery tech reaching the market. I was just having a whinge in a comment on a different article the other day about how all these new "magic" batteries never seem to make it past the theory or lab stage.