A robot just swapped my electric car's battery

What Hacker News said

Cites robin_reala · 2023-12 · on “Tesla FSD Timeline”

Nio have apparently 40k+ battery change stations in China, and a few more globally. Tom Scott did a video on it recently: [this video]

Cites whynotmaybe · 2023-12 · on “Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?”

I just watched this Tom Scott video this morning about a Chinese company that created a "pod" where you can replace the battery instead of charging it. [this video] You can buy the car and rent the battery. Each time you need to "recharge", you change it.

Cites satiric · 2023-12 · on “Chinese Tesla rival drives 1044km on a charge”

As of last May, they had 1360 battery swap stations across China, where in less than 5 minutes the battery can automatically be swapped out for a fully charged one. They are also starting to build stations in Europe. So they really are trying to make the experience better. And to be fair, Tesla is also working on this to a lesser extent in the US. Source for the battery swap data: [LINK] Edit: here's Tom Scott's youtube video about his experience using the battery swap service: [this video]

Cites iruoy · 2024-01 · on “Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars”

NIO now has 9 battery swap locations in The Netherlands. I'm not sure this is better than charging points, but at least we'll get some data on it. Tom Scott has made a video[1] about it. [1]: [this video]

Cites eichin · 2024-05 · on “How many EV charging stations does the US need to replace gas stations?”

NIO just did the expensive-to-automate part, it's not just theory... [this video] (Tom Scott demo/walkthrough.) Press release from April says [LINK] "it completed 40 million battery swaps" across 2300 stations. It still has to scale up from there and get traction from other car vendors beyond paper-only "partnerships"... but they've gotten vastly farther than [LINK] did before it failed 10 years ago.

Cites netsharc · 2025-04 · on “Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic”

Obviously a trailer would not be a clever idea, but Nio already has cars with swappable batteries, for short distances you could just install a battery pack which is maybe 20% battery and 80% empty space [this video]

Critical sokoloff · 2025-04 · on “Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic”

Both upthread replies seem to evidence approximately the same level of effort to me; "It won't be faster" isn't wildly less effort than "what if it will be faster?" Nio has fewer Nio battery swap stations operating in the entire world than just the state of New Jersey has filling stations (not dispensers, entire stations). Nothing in the video above made me think "oh wow, that looks like that process will be a lot faster than filling up!" and several segments made it seem like there would be more time involved in just getting the car into and out of the battery replacement service bay than filling up takes. (Nio's claim of a 2.5-3 minute battery swap seems to be measuring only the swap time