Battery-Swapping Stations for EVs Never Happened–But Why?

At this point, few of us remember Shai Agassi and his enterprise “Project Better Place.” He proposed to place EV battery-swapping stations strategically across the nation, a concept that would have virtually eliminated “range anxiety” and made charging one’s car as quick and innocuous as filling one’s car.

Yet it’s been at least 10 years since Agassi folded his tent.  He couldn’t even make Better Place work in his home country of Israel, one that has far better conditions than we have here in the U.S. (greater vehicle density per square mile, and more enmity towards oil).

What went wrong?

It’s a matter of speculation, but here are a couple of ideas:

Big Oil wants to delay the electrification of transportation as long as possible–preferably indefinitely.  Charging solutions that are user-friendly are bad news.

Uniform cooperation.  Each of the lower 48 states need to agree that this is the way to go, and, needless to say, each governor approaches things like this by asking “what’s in it for me?”

OEM buy-in.  This may have been the final nail in the coffin; it requires each automaker to standardize the size and location of its battery packs.  Certain car styles don’t lend themselves to any such standardization, which is why EV conversions (remember them?) are feasible only with certain makes/years of cars and trucks.

In any case, it wasn’t a horrible concept, but it was fatally flawed.