Dave’s episode on Battery As A Service aka swappable batteries.
Seems like I have something important to say about every single topic that was brought up in this episode. I have to say that this was the first time I’ve heard the term Battery as a Service. That logically leads me to the next topic, Transportation as a Service. If the fully autonomous ride hailing becomes reality in the next few years, the prediction is that commuters will no longer need to swap or charge batteries when they can swap the whole car! Indeed, they won’t even own a car when they can TaaS to anywhere. 🤗👍 The commuter may then have to switch to a freshly charged car at a charging station and continue on with the commute.
Then, the only concern will be: Who is going to plug the empty car into the charger? Does this mean we’re going to have to revert back to the days of when service stations had attendants? Or instead of automatically putting in a new battery, the charging station will automatically plug in the vehicle?
The thought has occurred that with vehicles having modular batteries, the power supply could be a modular battery replacement that runs on hydrogen or other green fuel. Hopefully in a decade or so green hydrogen will be commonly used for most heavy transportation, either directly as hydrogen or indirectly as synfuel.
One advantage of modular battery packs is that as the battery technology improves, it will be easy to upgrade — just swap the pack and pay for greater range. I don’t remember hearing Dave mention this in this episode. 😋