Robotic Drive-Thru Swaps EV Batteries in 5 Minutes

Startup Ample introduces its new robotic swapping station that can change an electric vehicle’s battery in five minutes.

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29 Comments

Louisa Buchholz

THRILLING UNTIL THE LAST SECOND🔥❤

    M0nkey

    yes mrs bot shoo

Anthony

Beats having to spend an arm and a leg to replace the battery. Modular Cars.

    Juan Macias

    That’s a good point would be great in longevity, to swap out the battery when the chemistry in yours is dead.

Jason

Those battery swap stations looks expensive. The battery modules taken out look pretty small so the cars don’t seem to have much range. The question is can they charge it like normal when they are not near a battery swap station?

nebulous

it’s cool but i am fairly certain that we will soon have cheap and fast charging batteries with high range so i think this will become obsolete soon.

    Be Low Below

    They were already made obsolete by EV technology from 7 years ago.

Mario Rafael

Didn’t Tesla and another Chinese company did this? But never came to fruiton because of different issues.

    Drakey Fenix

    He literally said that in the video. Watch it next time before you start commenting.

revisionfour

Tesla did this like 10 years ago.

femaledeer

Hasn’t anybody learned after the Chevy Bolt and Volt.

Chris Teasdale

Oh you silly man this won’t be a good idea until Daddy Elon says it is.

    FT

    What’s the crypto troll got to do with it? He has nothing to do with standards and should focus on building better quality cars.

Tet Zet

Replaceable phones batteries can be like this. Power bank like cassette tape where you insert batteries to charge.

chemjam

Funny we are now swapping batteries in cars but shouldn’t we be still able to do it in a phone?

    Be Low Below

    Free market capitalism, gotta love it when phone manufacturers will spend millions in lobbying to prevent laws from forcing replaceable modular batteries.

    a w

    Europe just passed a law that will require all phones to have the ability by 2027

    chemjam

    @a w yes I am aware of that but I live in US

    a w

    @chemjam phone makers won’t make 2 models. We will benefit by these rules in the US as well

Be Low Below

As if it wasn’t tried over a decade ago with Better place and Renault’s Fluence ZE

Andrew Anderson

Problem I see is a line of cars waiting to charge. First one gets fresh batteries, maybe the second one too, but eventually you get to a point when a car is only getting a partially charged battery unless there is enough time between swaps for the first cars depleted batteries to have fully charged or the station keeps enough in stock for this but, I think that would make the station HUGE and overly expensive. There is always a line of cars at the gas station near me.

Brian Nave

How do they know they aren’t getting an old battery that needs replaced and how would you like to get someone’s old battery?

Christopher Mara

I think you’re not explaining everything about the process. I would imagine that any EV would have to be modified to use this system of battery swooping. Additionally, does the modification change the EV’s ability to use the current charging methods?

alex3261

Hard to believe that people would agree to do this for their own vehicles, whe n we are talking about an $10000 and very sensible component.

Wordsworth

Concerned about weather and water for the station and the car itself.

Tony S

Not for me, I take very good care of my battery, I’ve no idea how trashed the new battery is. This is a perfect solution for commercial, Uber, Taxi batteries.

EchoMaestro

Only practical for taxi companies like Uber.

David Tuttle

The concept is great but the challenge here, I suspect, is getting adoption from automakers. If Ample can break into either the Euro, North American, or Japanese market (in a major way) then it will have a chance to spread to the rest.

Marlon Mancini

Fantastic . Yes

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