Ample has deployed a dozen of their original swapping stations in San Francisco. Now, they want to take their v2 station and scale it, starting again in San Francisco. But as they work with more OEMs, they’ll want and need to deploy them nationwide.
Their initial focus is on fleets and service drivers (e.g., Lyft drivers), as these are a profile of car users for whom speed to charge arguably matters the most. The initial Fisker roll-out will continue to service this category.
An (steep) uphill battle
There are many challenges for Ample and battery swapping in general in the U.S. For one, America is already several miles down the road to committing to conventional EV charging. While EV charging itself today is far from sufficient, it’s a start.
With swapping, you're proposing building a parallel but distinct set of infrastructure for the coming EV revolution. Imagine if half of all cars ran on gas and filled up at gas stations while another half swapped out the car's full tank every time they needed to refill it. There would need to be entirely different stations dedicated to that.
And the build-out of conventional charging for EVs is already rife with issues. Public chargers are notoriously broken:
"...public charging stations … often don't work. Parts break, information screens freeze, payment systems malfunction. Copper thieves steal the cords. Vandals damage plugs or, in one infamous instance, stuff them with ground meat." (via Automotive News)
Similarly, looking at Ample's swapping station, I see a lot of parts that could and will break. You have a mechanically raising platform. You have robotic arms exchanging heavy plates. You have the batteries themselves. And you have all software and data connections required to sync the car and the swapping port. If any of those things break, you're looking at hours, if not days, of your port being out of service.
Then there's the challenge of convincing more OEMs to work with their tech instead of just going for the conventional charging route, even in the face of all of the above listed challenges.
Then there's the station's footprint. It's not that small, certainly not as small as an EV charger. You can’t have as many ports as chargers in any one location. On average users may get in and out more quickly, but with a 5 minute swap time, if there's a long line of cars waiting to swap, the total time for a driver at the back of the line might amount to the same as for conventional charging.
Then there's the question of what happens when battery chemistries progress. What happens to the thousands of swappable batteries? I guess you try to use them to the end of their useful life and recycle and upgrade them. Ample has a technology that will allow them to run different chemistries in the same car, but there’s still a potential stranded asset problem.
Finally, what happens if conventional charging gets really fast? There are already companies claiming sub 5 minute EV charging with new technology. There’s no public data or demos to substantiate their claims yet… but it could be coming. That will still come with huge system costs (grid upgrade requirements, greater power demand), but customers might prefer it.
The net-net
None of the previous section was me trying to be a negative nelly. I’m genuinely impressed that the good folks at Ample would take this on in the face of all the challenges I mused about and battery swapping’s checkered history in the U.S.
Frankly, I’m floored by it. And I think it’s great. It’d be dumb of me to sit here and try to pontificate about whether I think this will work or not. But I am very glad Ample is trying, because, heck, ten years ago, there were as many seemingly insurmountable questions about EVs in general.
Maybe in the 2030s, we’ll say, “Thank heavens they kept at it because we sure are thankful that battery swapping exists in the U.S. now.”
Maybe we’ll say, “Thank god 10% of all EVs use battery swapping, otherwise peak load on the grid would be even harder to manage, and we’d be wasting even more daytime solar power.”
Maybe I’ll say, “I love my Fisker with Ample’s battery swapping technology to death and never want to drive an internal combustion engine with a manual transmission again.”
OK, that last one might be unlikely (stick shift lover till I die!). Concerning the others, however unlikely they may also seem, I’m cautiously optimistic.
