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Comment Use case for battery swap (Score 1) 70

I think the use case for battery swap is to support a kind of "power-by-the-hour" battery warranty akin to the arrangement airlines have with the jet-engine manufacturers.

If there was a way to replace the battery that didn't require hundreds of dollars in labor fees, an electric vehicle owner wouldn't have to worry about the unexpected expense of a battery wearing out. The motorist would "lease" the battery, essentially pay a subscription fee for the use of the battery, receiving a replacement when warranted.

The way this would work is that the software on the car would record how much wear-and-tear your driving put on the battery in terms of time, mileage, rates of charging and peak rates of discharge along with time spent at different state-of-charge, much like a jet engine warranty is for a certain number of bringing-the-engine-to-takeoff power "cycles" along with a "rating" applied to the engine as to what constitutes full power in all but emergencies. To make this transparent to the motorist, the system could display the amount of use put on the battery and remaining life.

The key to this battery lease arrangement is that it is relatively simple to exchange the battery. You would not be doing battery exchanges for increase range--that would open the can of worms of exchanging your relatively new battery for a battery someone had "beat on.". The exchange in this leasing arrangement also may give you a reconditioned used battery, but you are paying for "drive cycles" and are not put at financial risk if the battery you receive cannot complete the warranted drive cycles.

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