Recharging electric cars is still a slow and tedious process, as super-fast charging is only available for a handful of cars and, moreover, it is quite expensive. The way to solve this problem is still another, which is already applied to motorcycles and a Chinese system wants to apply to cars.
We are talking about battery swapping, something common among electric motorcycles but not the standard among cars, something that the Chinese brand NIO wants to change, at least for its vehicles, thanks to the Power Swap Station.
The firm is aware that, unlike what happens with motorcycles, car batteries are very large and heavy, which is why a person cannot disassemble them by themselves. Thus, they have created an automated station that handles the entire process by itself.
Similar in appearance to a booth, it is divided into two sections, one for storage and the other where the car is placed, which it accesses (and leaves) thanks to two ramps that allow it to climb onto a platform. In fact, the car recognizes the station and has a button with which it takes care of carrying out the platform and putting itself in its place.
Once inside, from the car’s multimedia system, the driver is responsible for activating the entire process.
Some lower rails center the vehicle to align it with the lower platform, which opens and rises, unscrewing the spent battery and extracting it to, through a system located on the floor, take it to the warehouse, which has a capacity for 13 batteries, where the structure is take charge of reloading it.
The system then takes a full battery and mounts it under the vehicle. The process takes no more than a few minutes to complete and the Chinese company claims that it can carry out up to 312 operations per day.
