A robot just swapped my electric car's battery

One of the problems people have with electric cars is charging time. Yes, modern fast chargers can get your car to 80% in about half an hour, maybe even a little quicker if you're lucky, but that's a long time compared to the three or four minutes that it takes to fill up with petrol or diesel. So when I first heard there was a car company building automated battery swap stations, where robots will switch out your car battery in just a few minutes, while you stay in the car... I assumed it'd be a weird prototype, some pie-in-the-sky technology from a university that would never become practical. But that is a battery swap station, right there, open to the public, so let's see if it works. - Nio has more than 2,100 stations operational in China, and the goal is to reach 2,300 by end of year. In Europe, we started around two years ago, and we have now 30 operational stations. In China, every day we have more than 40,000 battery swaps being performed, one every two seconds. And we have had peaks during holiday season, more than 60,000 a day. We're not just piloting this, it's already proven at scale. - As ever, this is not an advert, they haven't paid me, I reached out to them, they have just let me borrow a car. [Car] "Please press the brake pedal. " "Nicely done! " "Now you can tap to start parking into the Power Swap station. " - You drive the car in front of the station, and once you park the car takes over. And it's fully automatic. [Car] "We are parking now. " "Be aware of your surroundings. " "Do not open any door or take over the steering wheel. " "You can press the brake panel to control the speed. " - Nio users, if they want to access the Power Swap network, they need to choose "Battery as a Service". So that means they don't own the battery, they lease the battery, and so they can get access to the Power Swap station network. You can purchase the battery and the car. Or car, but choose access to the swapping network. You can also just subscribe to both the car and the battery. - The idea is that you're not renting or buying a specific battery, but you're just paying for there always being a fresh battery in your car. Charging is still a cheaper option, but there are plenty of people who'll pay a fee for convenience. [Car] "Preparing. Please wait. " - We can serve the same amount of users comparable to a charging hub, but we need only one third of the space and we need grid connection because we can charge the batteries at their low speed. We provide frequency balancing services. We charge the batteries at specific points in time where there is a need to get rid of all that power and balance the grid. - The thing is, I've driven electric cars on long trips before, and charging wasn't really a big problem: it needs a little more planning than using fossil fuels, but turns out, I want to rest at about the same interval the car wants charging. Folks out there who can drive eight hours in one go... good luck, but I am not one of you. - The best way to charge a vehicle is at home if you have a socket, right? With EV becoming more affordable, there are more people who want to access an electric vehicle, and don't have the opportunity to have a socket close to where they park their car. Shanghai, a city with more than 20 million inhabitants, people live in big apartments, and so, on-street charging, it's much less than in Europe. People don't have access to home charging because it's a much more dense city. Power Swap offers a great opportunity to just leave your home, drive to the station, swap your battery and continue your trip. - And of course, there is the catch that this battery swap station only works for cars that are built for it. You can get a Nio battery swapped here, but there's no other car on the market that can use this. At least, not yet. - We have been signing strategic agreements with big groups like Changan and Geely Group. We have gained the confidence of also the other auto makers. There's a opportunity to standardize this technology, in China, but perhaps also in Europe. We're going to invest in Battery as a Service. And the Power Swap network. If you take the whole economics, we do believe that this is better than just selling a car. - Plenty of people, electric vehicle enthusiasts, stock brokers, people who've bought Nio stock, have a running analyses on whether the company's financial model will work. Building these stations is incredibly expensive, and it's no secret that Nio is losing a staggering amount of money right now, but that's the way that colossal startup companies and finance work these days. They hope the initial outlay will be worth it in the end. That strategy has paid off for a lot of big corporations... and not paid off for many more. I looked at a lot of those financial analyses while I was researching and my conclusion is: I don't know! Predicting anything about electric vehicles is almost impossible: it's an industry filled with both radical inventions and broken promises.

I'm just astonished that something I thought was science fiction does appear to be an actual real-world option right now... and that a robot just swapped out my car battery.