Comment Re:Truck Stops, Gas Stations, etc (Score 1) 904
How old are the batteries? Do you own your battery? What is a battery worth? Do you load your truck with aging, unreliable batteries to swap-off with other aging, unreliable batteries?
When it comes to a truck which will have a sizeable number of large batteries, you're pretty much statistically guaranteed to never have more than a dud or two so long as the battery management process is sound.
As a service station manager, how do you test each of these batteries to ensure its safety and reliability (its level of aging)
By, for example, any of the dozen or so methods already used for this purpose?
As a service station manager, how do you offset the cost of rotating out old batteries traded in by truckers?
By rolling that into the swapping cost?
Could you please ask questions a little harder than "What does 1+1 equal?" I'm seriously not getting why you don't already know the answer to these questions you're asking.
Changing batteries in something like a truck is a labor-intensive process.
Wait a minute, you think that when people talk about battery swap they're talking about someone going up and swapping batteries by hand?
mounting may preclude a fast removal operation.
Many companies have already demonstrated battery swap for cars, which is a far harder target than trucks. With trucks, my preferred mounting is on the trailers themselves (with the cab having its own, non-swappable batteries). You already have, today, stuff mounted to the underside of trailers. It's right where the structural strength is already located and you have tons of open space underneath for easy access and standard form factors. It's an order of magnitude easier challenge than for cars, which you practically have to have disassemble their frames to get their batteries out.
The operation may take 40 minutes overall
Battery swap in the much harder case of cars can be done in less than a tenth that time.
Mounting the batteries affects balance, thus handling, thus safety
And you're envisioning that one would load all of the batteries only on one side or something...?
Think about it as if you were going to swap an entire, pre-filled gas tank
And think about having the tank you plan to switch out be a standardized external tank mounted in a standard form factor on a standard trailer.