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Old October 19th, 2021, 11:55 AM   #12
Alex
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Name: 1 guess :-)
Location: SF Bay Area
Join Date: Jun 2008

Motorcycle(s): '13 Ninja 300 (white, the fastest color!), '13 R1200RT, '14 CRF250L, '12 TT-R125LE, '15 CRF110F, '13 TT-R50E

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Quote:
Originally Posted by DannoXYZ View Post
I think big breakthrough will be interchangeable battery-packs for instant refills at service-stations. The Japanese bike manufacturers are collaborating their designs around that. Hopefully automakers will as well.
After a bunch of stops and starts with this, including some business concepts that got pretty far down the path on replaceable/interchangeable battery packs in other countries, they've pretty much fizzled out. The model works for something like propane tanks for a grill, where people don't give a whit about which one they get, just swap it out each time as it is quicker, easier, and cost-effective. The cost of the propane inside of the tank is worth more than the tank itself, and if it goes missing or is broken, on balance the company selling them doesn't really care.

Swappable battery packs for cars have a very different pricing model. Those battery packs are worth many thousands of dollars, and likely will remain very valuable, at least for a few decades. People would care if they swapped out their pricey new one for a dinged up used one that has some percentage less range/performance, and the cost of the pack is thousands of times what the cost of an individual recharge of that pack is valued at in electricity. And physically swapping out the pack is always going to be costly. It's getting to the point where recharging (perhaps to 80% rather than 100%) is going to be faster than swapping safely anyway, if that's not already the case. The math just doesn't work, and the variables are too far out of whack to expect that math to change in our lifetime.

For a smaller pack like a motorcycle, perhaps its more likely than a car - but I still think that conundrum of the pack being worth so much more than the individual energy of each charge, and the pack being worth such a large portion of the vehicle itself, still stands in this case as well.

That doesn't mean that motorcycle manufacturers shouldn't push for some type of standard, and even work to making things so similar that they can be interchangeable in models or even manufacturers. Standardization should make it easier and cheaper to engineer, procure, and cost out - and the cheaper they can make the batteries/battery packs, the better. I just don't think the end game is that they become disposable and swappable by the end user in lieu of charging.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DannoXYZ View Post
And range should be next goal. Tesla's been focusing on getting more instantaneous power out of their cars and boasting faster and faster 1/4-mile drag-race times. How important is that for most people? How often do you do 1/4-mile drag-races during your commute? Range is more important and I'd love to see 1000-mile range between battery swaps.
Agreed! As long is performance is adequate (or more than adequate) for whatever people are using the cars or bikes for, range is the key variable.
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