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EV battery swaps will be tested with the Fiat 500e in 2024
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Has to be a subscription or a per-swap fee. Probably subscription to account for the degradation point.
But, you essentially have a subscription for car energy now, you probably pay weekly for gasoline. If they can make it competitive to that I think they have a shot. Say $50/week in gas, means $200/month...seems like that could be profitable. And at least some of the money goes all to the car company, not a million different GA stations, which is a good incentive for them to try to make it work.
$200/month to drive an EV is really expensive though. I drive 30.000km/year and pay around $70/month in electricity for the car. The average driver in my country drives something like 12.000km/year, so that's closer to $30/month in electricity. That makes $200 seem insane.
I assume they wouldn't have as big an upfront cost on the car though, since they never actually buy the batteries.
If you look at prices for something like the Nio cars without the battery here in Europe, they're hardly competitive with regular EVs. The price saving is substantially less than a battery replacement. With the battery subscription (doesnt even include the day-to-day charging, which isbkikelu to be done at homeequating to a battery life of just under 6 years, it seems like a pretty bad deal.
And for everyday driving, you're likely still charging at home overnight, so the battery rental cost is just extra on top of that.
Yeah, I mean I don't think it's a particularly viable plan overall. A lease for a Nissan Leaf is what? £300 a month?
But Americans seem convinced that they drive coast to coast on a regular basis, so an electric car will never do. I can see who they're trying to appeal to, although 99% of electric car use would be covered by a charger at home.
I don't think a subscription would quite work for this. Somebody traveling 10k a month isn't going to consume the same amount of batteries as someone who's commuting 1 mile away each day. I certainly wouldn't want to pay the same amount. Kind of an all you can eat shrimp situation, if you will