Battery swapping seems to be an obsolete technology. Battery capacities are now big enough, and charging is fast enough, that it's not worth the hassle.
https://www.electrive.com/2019/06/05/hyundai-to-sell-their-f...
And Volkswagen is keeping fuel cell cars open as an option:
https://www.audi.com/en/experience-audi/models-and-technolog...
Battery EV is high-capacity battery + engine + thermal management system for the battery.
Hydrogen EV is fuel cell + low-capacity battery (for smoothing out peaks and recuperation) + engine + thermal management system for the fuel cells.
BEV have low price per km (here it's about 1/4 compared to gas cars), but lower range, while H2EV have higher price per km (in Germany where there's actually infrastructure available, its about the same price per km as gas car) but higher range, so it can make sense for some use-cases, like long-range buses or whatever.
You could even build Plug-in Hydrogen EV with medium capacity battery and have BEV-like usage where you charge at home but still get 1000 km range if necessary - it seems needlessly complex, but it just means adding bigger battery and charging port to H2EV, so it can make sense.
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/26050/exclusive-toyota-hydroge...
Before getting back to Hydrogen when the world realize there is not enough Cobalt and Lithium on Earth for every car.
We're not going to run out of lithium any time soon, current supplies are limited only by the fact that it's only been desirable for a few years. There's a LOT of lithium mining capacity coming online now or in the near future.
Hydrogen was a dead end in 2000 and it's only getting deader.
Easy sentence with no content. Dead on which aspect ? In Elon Musk propaganda speech ?
Hydrogen never was a dead end technically. It's only blocker is cost of generation, cost that goes away with scale and cheaper electricity.
2) Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in existence - meaning that it escapes through any container you put it in. A 70kg pure lead bottle only holds about 1L of hydrogen, and all of it will evaporate within couple months naturally. And as it does so, it makes the metal brittle. So "producing loads of hydrogen for storage" is not a great idea either.
That's kind of the case in a few different places though - e.g. Solar is "free" and the losses don't really matter in many places.
1) generation (very inefficient, or generates tons of carbon)
2) storage, both offline and in vehicles (very expensive, dangerous, heavy, very inefficient, or a combination thereof)
3) transport (same, due mostly to 2)
4) usage efficiency (not bad with a fuel cell but still not great)
5) power density (fuel cells have low power to weight which is why no-one uses the generated power directly)
6) fuel cell lifetime (fuel cells don't last that long)
7) fuel cell cost
I've held this opinion since the best EVs were using Optima Yellowtop PbA batteries and Mr. Musk over there was working at Paypal.
Their hydrogen fuel cell is clearly not the way the industry is going. So are they going back to batteries, the tech they said would never be commercially viable?
H2EV don't "burn" the hydrogen, because fuel cells are much better than engines that burn stuff in cylinders. So you end up with electormotor and fuel cell.
And since you can recuperate into fuel cell and fuel cells aren't very good at providing big short peaks of power, it makes sense to add a battery to smooth things out and to store energy when braking.
But the battery doesn't need high-capacity, because it's just a temporary store of energy. It's a very different battery technology than what you find in a Tesla or Kia e-Niro or whatever.
In the end, Toyota H2EV (Mirai) is basically 1) electromotor from Lexus hybrid 2) battery from Prius 3) Fuel cell.
I think the idea is to save you time at charging station if you can do a swap and go. + increase the performance life of your car by making it cheap to replace the battery.
Unless making ultra fast rechargeable batteries is sustainable, safe, and environment-friendly, Battery swapping is a good option.
https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-battery-swapping-plan...
> Plugged into a Supercharger, a Model S battery can be charged to 80% capacity in just 40 minutes, free of charge. On the other hand, a battery swap is by appointment only and could cost the driver between $60 and $80.
There's also the question of "where can I swap my battery?". Charging stations are now common enough[0] that it's not a worry for people who would consider an Electric Car.
[0] Within reason...
Can I just charge my car before going to work in the morning in 5 minutes, like I do with petrol?
https://www.drivingelectric.com/porsche/469/new-porsche-tayc...
Better answer: it depends on how charged your battery pack is at the time. New Tesla superchargers have been able to charge Model 3s up to 420 mph. That is if the charging continued at that rate for one hour, that battery pack would give you 420 miles of range.
But as you charge a battery, the rate at which you charge slows down. Think of it as stuffing a pillow, the more stuffing you have in your pillow, the harder you have to push to cram that stuffing in. In this case voltage is pushing electrical current into your battery. Recently, Tesla has been upgrading their charging stations to have higher voltage which means faster charging. In the attached article you'll see that they say in optimal conditions you'll be able to add 75 miles of range to your battery pack in 5 minutes.
To help optimize your battery, a software update 'warms up' your battery pack before you get to the charger as long as you put it in your vehicles map. I'm not sure what warming up means exactly or how heat would help but I'm sure someone else could explain that better than me.
So yeah, if you work less than 75 miles away, you could get a quick 5 min boost. But it would be advisable for long term health of your battery pack to charge it up to ~%80 each time. Again, I'm not the guy to explain why that is. So you'd want to plan ahead a bit.
If I'm imagining being in that situation where I'm late for work and I don't have enough juice to get there I would put the nearest supercharger in the navigation, fuel up for 5min, and then charge at work probably from a slow charger, and on my way home I'd stop at that supercharger again and top it off for 30min while I got a coffee or groceries (or browsed hacker news). And I'd try not to let that happen again because it could wear out that battery.
Sorry for the long reply but I hope this gives you a glimpse of the reality of EV ownership. I'm a prospective owner and have been doing some reading up on what to expect, if anyone has some input I would love to read it.