Links 🔗

- NIO’s Battery Swap vs. Tesla’s Supercharger V3 

- Battery-Swapping, NIO, and Formula E’s Future

There are 3 main elements to an Electric Vehicle (EV):

• The car
• The battery
• The charging station

Tesla has secured its foothold in these aspects for their EVs, you buy a Tesla EV with a Tesla battery to charge at a Tesla station.

NIO is adding an alternative to the power solution, instead of charging the EV battery, you can swap it out for a fully charged one at the station.

• It’s faster than charging (0% to 100% in 5 minutes, whereas fast charging takes ~30 minutes)
• Cheaper EV cost (Option to buy an EV without battery, leasing the battery separately)
• Less worry of battery degradation (you’ll be getting batteries in good condition after every swap)

Limitations of Battery Swapping:

• Still too few swapping stations to go absolutely anywhere
• Uniformity of batteries may make power upgrades difficult

No doubt Tesla is way ahead in the EV market, but NIO has made battery swapping a viable option, where Tesla had tried but abandoned this technology years ago.

This series is brought to you by Lee Way (@leewaylau). He will be writing about political, societal, history, movies and music on What's Up Wednesday.

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