The Xpeng is a really neat car that just introduced Lidar (light detection and ranging) that can give exact distance measurements.
It can also do this (one of the coolest things ever!):
Itās already there actually. Neighborās got a model 3. Claims that 15 min on supercharger gives her about 150-180 miles. Thatās a bit longer than a fill up with gas but not prohibitively so IMO. Assuming ubiquitous availability of such chargers and continuous improvements in charging rates and capacities, I think it almost voids most concerns people have with range.
As far as swappable battery packs, that seems a more remote possibility to me. Youād first need some standardization among all EV manufacturers so that the battery you swap out could get recharged and swapped in to any other car. And at the moment, the size of the EV batteries is too large for this solution to be practical. The battery on a standard range model 3 is over 1000 lbs. Itāll be a while at the current rate of fuel cell capacity increase to shrink that to something that is practically swappable. By then, my gut feeling is that fast charging will have made this solution obsolete.
No, you donāt, and it doesnāt make any sense to do so. Most car companies have proprietary batteries or batteries designed specifically for their vehicle.
Itās not a remote possibility, as itās already being done with cars and scooters.
See up-thread about NIO, which has done over two million battery swaps. It takes 3 minutes to do.
FYI, all ICE cars swap batteries already, and many are different sizes.
Note: Battery swaps have gotten faster since this video as NIO introduced a more advanced station. The neat thing is you can get different power or newer tech batteries if you want. And go back and forth between different kinds. Youāre not restricted to battery swap for recharging. You can also charge the battery if you want.
Also, the car can park itself in the battery bay.
More on Xpeng P7:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSNEqZPoBqE&t=560s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6oDoavCxxY&t=498s
All these new cars are being designed for eventual autonomous driving.
They have a host of cameras and sensors for other things like radar (Tesla has front facing radar). Radar, which transmits radio waves, can see in all weather, but it captures only a partial picture of the road scene. It tells you somethingās there but gives indistinct images, Lidar gives exact distance measurements but canāt see in bad weather like the human eye canāt see through fog. There is a lot of work being done with algorithms to get the best results from cameras but also combo systems like dual radar making a lidar like radar that can see in inclement weather.
So itās not already there actually.
āNot prohibitiveā is highly subjective. Others can see 15 minutes as better than 60 minutes, but still prohibitive.
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How much does this swapping cost a driver? Its not what I was envisioning, but itās pretty close and great step in (what Iād consider) the right direction.
Volume would be a concern, without a sufficient density of stations, wait times could be even worse than charging times (which the video even touches on). But with the ability to charge at home too, maybe there wouldnt be the steady stream of cars (cross 8-12 pumps at once) that you typically see when filling up with gas. And I cant imagine that station is cheap.
Having to back into the station would be a non-starter, at least around here - the station would constantly be out of service due to accidents 
.
Nio Battery Swapping:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTsrDpsYHrwNIO EC6 - My First Battery Swap - Are There Enough Swap Stations? How Long Does It Take? - YouTube
As a trump republican. I now own a hybrid camry. Wow. I love it. The power is great. I regularly floor it n still avg 48 mpg. Good times.
I deliver for walmart. Drive for lyft. Plus drive 250 miles a week for my W2 job.
So right now electric as my primary doesnt make sense.
But when i have a normal life again n also dont live in an apt complex. (Estimate 2-3 years)
I actually am going electric for my primary car. Its not the save the planet nonsense. Which it is 100% bs. Its for the autodriving and the torque. These things are quick quick.
My next post will be on topic.
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The infrastructure for something like this seems very challenging. It seems dedicated to one specific car manufacturer. Without standardization, youād need to multiply the number of these swapping stations several folds to cover all models. Plus it needs a very large booth to swap one battery on a single car so capital investment to build swapping station capacity would be much larger than for gas stations. Most current gas stations service at least 6-8 cars at once regardless of model. He acknowledges that itāll take 20 minutes because there are two cars looking to swap batteries ahead of him. At that rate, it could really get ugly on holiday weekends in touristy areas. So good idea but I donāt see the scaling up working out. Not yet at least.
For daily usage, car is basically at 100% in the morning and youāll be hard pressed to need much more than the 350 miles range for driving around town.
For long trips, Iād assume the car will have been recharged fully overnight so with 350 miles range in the morning. Personally, I usually stop about 10-15 min every 2-3 hours of driving, going to the restroom, stretching legs, etc. Plus a longer break for lunch. If I did two 15 min rechargings and a longer lunch one, Iād reach around 1000 miles range for not that much time investment that I would not have spent anyway. So this kind of breaks for recharging wouldnāt dramatically change my usual road trips because I rarely drive more than 1000 miles in a day.
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That seemed off to me too. Why not make it so you can drive in and drive out like you do in a automatic car wash thing? I was also wondering how sensitive the lifting of the car and swapping of the battery is to misalignment of the car in the booth.
Oooook. Opertunities to profit.
Had a handy dandy gif with who is in what industries in regards to renewables. But cant find it.
And i just saw this.
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This studied vehicle owners from 2012-2018. The technology is changing fast.
Also, 4 in 5 EV owners in this study kept their EVs!
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Iāll have to go along with Argyll on this one. Think of all the good EV news we can see happening today 2021. That 6 year study of electric vehicles is only the beginning.
Iām also thinking in that vein also. Like owens said earlier, even Trump Republicans are eyeing these electric cars.
New 2021 high end gas guzzler vehicleās leave my head spinning. Theyāre still wonderful. Iāve been seriously checking out the new Mercedes C300. 
When itās a new product being manufactured by one specific car manufacturer, of course itās going to be specialized to that manufacturer. This is the VCR all over - multiple options, with one winning out and becoming the industry standard.
But with a charger, heās be waiting over an hour for those 2 cars to plug in and charge for 30 minutes each, then still have to wait for his own car to charge. Swapping batteries doesnt enable more thuroughput - one charger can charge one battery whether itās in a car or in the swapped inventory - but it slashes the time commitment required from each driver.
And thatās any different than charging stations, how?
Itās only at 100% in the morning if you presume itās been plugged in overnight. Again, a very subjective to be considered the standard.
You are assuming there is an unused charging station at every stop. You could very well be waiting 30 minutes before plugging in for that 15 minute charge. Even longer when the person ahead of you is also getting lunch, and finishes eating before returning to his car to move it so you can start charging.
You noted the wait time in the video, which he said has built to 20 minutes as more people are using the stations. Itās no different than public charging stations, the more cars on the road the longer youāll have to wait just to get access to a plug.
It looked like the floor had rollers to automatically position the car before beginning the process.
But I do wonder if the multitude of car designs, even with standardized batteries/battery placement, would be a significant obstacle? Different bodt lengths and wheel bases will affect getting lined up with the battery underneath.
Itās also based entirely on plug-in charging, and only supports the case for swappable batteries.
From FORTUNE:
Size (real estate required) and cost of booths vs dozens of parking spots with a rack of charging poles. You cannot really shrink the footprint of these booths. And if the cost of the booths to build and/or operate and the real estate needed for them are higher, it can be a barrier to availability.
Their main advantage in my mind currently is the shorter time to full charge. 5 min vs 15. Also depends on the costs involved.
Itās definitely easier when youāre looking at a single car manufacturer. But maybe there could to be a way to detect make and model. Maybe it could be done automatically via scanning something underneath the car. Or that data being transmitted via a button in the car, or worst case, entered manually.
The warehousing for having many different types of batteries could also be an issue. You would have to keep several charged batteries of every model type at each booth. And youād need to store enough charged batteries of every type to be ready for whatever volumes of swapping you could face. Or some ways to have online inventory accessible to drivers so they know which swapping station has available charged batteries for them. Which is why some standardization could really help so each swapping station does not need to stock that many batteries.