Chinese-style EV battery swap stations are coming to Europe
Key takeaways
- It's focusing on EV trucking as a cheaper, faster alternative to diesel.
- Octopus Energy Octopus Energy, the UK's largest energy provider, has teamed up with CATL, the world's biggest EV battery maker, to bring Chinese-style battery swap stations to Europe.
- We've all heard EV boosters talk up battery swapping as the inevitable solution to range anxiety, especially without having to rinse your equipment with fast charging.
It's focusing on EV trucking as a cheaper, faster alternative to diesel.
Octopus Energy Octopus Energy, the UK's largest energy provider, has teamed up with CATL, the world's biggest EV battery maker, to bring Chinese-style battery swap stations to Europe. The pair claim they want to roll out a network of facilities across the continent, targeted at keeping electric trucks on the road for longer. Each hub would be capable of servicing thousands of trucks a day, replacing depleted cells with fresh ones in "minutes." Such a system may even be faster than filling a conventional truck with diesel, and it's certainly a lot cheaper.
We've all heard EV boosters talk up battery swapping as the inevitable solution to range anxiety, especially without having to rinse your equipment with fast charging. In theory, you could just rock up at a station, dump your drained cells and put freshly-charged ones in, all in the time it takes you to visit the bathroom. Of course, the truth was never as simple: The high price of batteries and the engineering required meant it never quite worked as well as they had hoped, and even Tesla abandoned the idea a decade ago.