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Battery Swapping is concept of changing the discharged battery with the charged battery to place it in a mother component (vehicle or bike), keeping the discharged battery in charging platform/station. This help out in super-fast charging of battery. This removes the hurdle of range for electric vehicles and the concept of standardization and interchangeability of multi – company batteries can be achieved.
The main problem of whole setup is if the battery dimensions vary company to company the technology may not come out to be handy, to overcome this problem the manufacturer need to careful that their battery and others battery can fulfill the duty in their respective vehicles.
The advantage of swapping technology is instead of waiting for the charging time of battery to again hit for the destination the owner can just swap the battery with other fully charged battery within minutes and continue the journey.
The market for swapping technology is new as the standards are introduced for the electric vehicles given by ISO (International Organization for Standardization). The Problems with battery swapping technology are:
Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell and Chinese electric vehicle company Nio established a joint venture to increase the number of charging and battery switching stations in China and Europe. The two companies stated in news statements that the partnership comprises a network of co-branded battery switching stations, beginning with two trial locations in China.
100 sites are planned for Shell and Nio in China. The two businesses intend to “explore” potential locations for experimental battery swapping sites in Europe before expanding from there. Nio drivers will also have access to Shell’s European charging infrastructure.
The agreement also addresses possible combined initiatives for fleet management, membership services, home charging services, technology advancement, and a charging network in China.
While other businesses have struggled to develop a viable business plan, Nio has persisted in investing in battery swapping, with a target of 700 stations in operation.
Nio began selling in Norway, its first market outside of China, with the intention of shortly entering the European Union. By giving clients access to the oil company’s charging stations, the relationship with Shell lays the path for that.
Shell has been heavily investing on EV charging since it believes that the industry has passed peak oil.
In the Electric vehicle battery swapping market, the company started to contribute in developing the technology for battery management but it has faced the huge disturbance in the production and further development affected due to COVID, as workers and other necessary goods were either not available or not being able to transport to other places.
Automotive sector is one of the most affected sectors as the sales of their product halted in lockdown and in post COVID either people are still not ready to move out or the global economy has been affected and unemployment indirectly led to the decrease in the sale of vehicles. The delay in launch of new product disruption in distribution of semi-finished and finished goods also hindered the market growth.
The emerging research and development for swapping technology and sudden increase in its demand was affected. The year gap in R & D led the research to again think of potential research morale in people. Now, mainly startups are coming up in this sector to fulfill customer needs instead of old players that shows that people are willing to contribute to a sustainable future to their own will as well.
The main concentration for the battery technology is type of battery material that can be used for providing the more charging capacity that overall increases the range of vehicles.
The installment of battery swapping stations has again started as in COVID times the field work was halted, although the government may be providing subsidy in this case but the overall cost of installation of these stations is high, so currently the number of battery swapping stations is less and may increase in near future.
The Europe electric vehicle battery swapping market is estimated to be US $ XX Billion in 2023, and expected to grow at a CAGR of XX% by the year 2030. The market of Europe includes major countries like Germany, Netherland, Belgium, Italy, France, Spain, UK, etc.
The main attraction for the increase in battery swapping stations is in the hands of Electric vehicle manufacturers. If they don’t introduce the charging infrastructure that has a battery swapping system in their vehicle then how will the battery swapping market flourish. Less than 50 battery swapping stations are present all over Europe. Better Place, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Tesla has introduced battery swapping system in their model S may be the only model to do so. Better Place is the first joint venture company to introduce a battery swapping system, but was liquidated in 2013.
Their advantage of using battery swapping systems such as Automation, Refueling less than 5 minutes, no extra professional knowledge, and transfer battery system will promote interchangeability in battery design and standardization. Battery swapping does not only promote electric mobility but also promote increase in cloud storage systems as data storage is required by the service provider.
