A robot just swapped my electric car's battery

0:00 One of the problems people have with electric cars is charging time.

0:04 Yes, modern fast chargers can get your car to 80% in about half an hour,

0:08 maybe even a little quicker if you're lucky,

0:09 but that's a long time compared to the three or four minutes

0:13 that it takes to fill up with petrol or diesel.

0:15 So when I first heard there was a car company

0:17 building automated battery swap stations,

0:20 where robots will switch out your car battery

0:22 in just a few minutes, while you stay in the car...

0:25 I assumed it'd be a weird prototype,

0:27 some pie-in-the-sky technology from a university

0:30 that would never become practical.

0:31 But that is a battery swap station,

0:34 right there, open to the public,

0:36 so let's see if it works.

0:37 - Nio has more than 2,100 stations operational in China,

0:43 and the goal is to reach 2,300 by end of year.

0:47 In Europe, we started around two years ago,

0:49 and we have now 30 operational stations.

0:52 In China, every day we have more than 40,000 battery swaps being performed,

0:58 one every two seconds.

1:00 And we have had peaks during holiday season,

1:03 more than 60,000 a day.

1:05 We're not just piloting this, it's already proven at scale.

1:07 - As ever, this is not an advert, they haven't paid me,

1:11 I reached out to them,

1:12 they have just let me borrow a car.

1:14 [Car] "Please press the brake pedal."

1:17 "Nicely done!"

1:19 "Now you can tap to start parking into the Power Swap station."

1:22 - You drive the car in front of the station,

1:24 and once you park in front of the station,

1:26 the car takes over. And it's fully automatic.

1:29 [Car] "We are parking now."

1:31 "Be aware of your surroundings."

1:33 "Do not open any door or take over the steering wheel."

1:37 "You can press the brake panel to control the speed."

1:42 - Nio users, if they want to access the Power Swap network,

1:49 they need to choose "Battery as a Service".

1:51 So that means they don't own the battery,

1:54 they lease the battery,

1:55 and so they can get access to the Power Swap station network.

1:58 You can purchase the battery and the car.

2:01 Or you can purchase the car,

2:02 but choose access to the swapping network.

2:05 You can also just subscribe to both the car and the battery.

2:08 - The idea is that you're not renting or buying a specific battery,

2:12 but you're just paying for there always being a fresh battery in your car.

2:17 Charging is still a cheaper option,

2:18 but there are plenty of people who'll pay a fee for convenience.

2:21 [Car] "Preparing. Please wait."

2:24 - We can serve the same amount of users comparable to a charging hub,

2:29 but we need only one third of the space

2:31 and we need one third of the grid connection

2:33 because we can charge the batteries at their low speed.

2:36 We provide frequency balancing services.

2:39 We charge the batteries at specific points in time

2:44 where there is a need to get rid of all that power and balance the grid.

2:49 - The thing is, I've driven electric cars on long trips before,

2:52 and charging wasn't really a big problem:

2:55 it needs a little more planning than using fossil fuels,

2:57 but turns out, I want to rest

2:59 at about the same interval the car wants charging.

3:02 Folks out there who can drive eight hours in one go...

3:05 good luck, but I am not one of you.

3:07 - The best way to charge a vehicle is at home if you have a socket, right?

3:11 With EV becoming more affordable,

3:13 there are more people who want to access an electric vehicle,

3:16 and don't have the opportunity

3:18 to have a socket close to where they park their car.

3:20 Shanghai, a city with more than 20 million inhabitants,

3:24 people live in big apartments, and so, on-street charging,

3:29 it's much less than in Europe.

3:31 People don't have access to home charging because it's a much more dense city.

3:35 Power Swap offers a great opportunity

3:38 to just leave your home, drive to the station,

3:41 swap your battery and continue your trip.

3:43 - And of course, there is the catch that this battery swap station

3:46 only works for cars that are built for it.

3:48 You can get a Nio battery swapped here,

3:49 but there's no other car on the market that can use this.

3:52 At least, not yet.

3:54 - We have been signing strategic agreements with big groups like Changan and Geely Group.

4:00 We have gained the confidence of also the other auto makers.

4:04 There's a opportunity to standardize this technology,

4:08 in China, but perhaps also in Europe.

4:10 We're going to invest in Battery as a Service.

4:13 And we're going to invest in the Power Swap network.

4:16 If you take the whole economics,

4:18 we do believe that this is better than just selling a car.

4:21 - Plenty of people,

4:22 electric vehicle enthusiasts, stock brokers,

4:24 people who've bought Nio stock,

4:26 have a running analyses on whether the company's financial model will work.

4:29 Building these stations is incredibly expensive,

4:32 and it's no secret that Nio is losing a staggering amount of money right now,

4:35 but that's the way that colossal startup companies

4:38 and finance work these days.

4:39 They hope the initial outlay will be worth it in the end.

4:42 That strategy has paid off for a lot of big corporations...

4:45 and not paid off for many more.

4:47 I looked at a lot of those financial analyses

4:49 while I was researching and my conclusion is:

4:52 I don't know!

4:52 Predicting anything about electric vehicles is almost impossible:

4:55 it's an industry filled with both radical inventions and broken promises.

5:00 I'm just astonished that something I thought was science fiction

5:03 does appear to be an actual real-world option right now...

5:07 and that a robot just swapped out my car battery.