China's battery swapping technology could help rescue U.S. EV revolution: report

Battery swapping is taking off in China, and it could help rescue the EV revolution in the United States, U.S. media outlet Business Insider has reported.

America's EV revolution is stalling, and the time it takes to charge an electric car is at the heart of the issue, said the report published on Saturday.

Charging an EV can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 50 hours and anxieties over range and charging are putting many drivers off going electric, it added.

Battery swapping, an approach being used by Chinese EV maker Nio, might provide a solution as it sees dead EV batteries replaced with fully charged ones in less than five minutes, the report said.

The company's battery-swapping strategy has picked up traction in the fiercely competitive Chinese EV market in recent months, with deals being signed with fellow Chinese electric vehicle makers, the report said.

Experts quoted in the report said battery swapping offers a solution to many of the concerns of EV drivers. "From a purely technological point of view, it is the panacea," said Dylan Khoo, an analyst at ABI Research.

In the meantime, he noted that establishing a battery-swapping network in the U.S. would require intense collaboration between U.S. automakers, who would have to agree to use batteries with a similar size and design.

"A lot of the automakers in the West are a bit more protective and defensive. They want to have a lot more ownership and they wouldn't necessarily be as comfortable with sharing this big network because the battery is really the key defining component of EVs," Khoo said.