China Working To Create Industry Standard Battery Swapping Technology

Aiming to spur more adoption of electric vehicles in China, the government is working on creating an industry standard for battery swapping technology. 

According to a report in Bloomberg, the idea with the standards is to enable electric vehicle owners to swap out a depleted battery for a fully charged one instead of going to an EV station to get power. One of the knocks on EVs is the time it takes to charge back up. 

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China may create battery swap stations

China is betting that using battery swapping stations instead of charging stations will drive more adoption of EV vehicles. As it stands China is the largest market for these vehicles across the globe. 

According to TheNextWeb, in theory, China would create battery swap stations where EV drivers would have their old batteries removed and a fully charged new one installed.

The entire process would only take a few minutes, no more than it takes today to fill up a gasoline-powered vehicle.  The report noted that electric vehicles could also be sold without a battery, which would lower the cost of the vehicles. 

China wants to be an EV leader

China has been pouring tons of money and effort into becoming a global leader in the electric vehicle market. As of this summer, the number of charging posts in the country surpassed 1 million, marking 69.3% year-over-year growth.

China added 140,000 new public charging posts during the last year with amounts to about 11,700 new posts introduced each month.  Even as sales of new vehicles decline in China, sales of EV are growing. The country ended the year with market share of 4.7%, up from 4.5% selling more than 1 million EVs.

China's government isn't the only one to look at creating a battery that can easily be swapped out. Over the years startups have emerged only to fail a few years later. But given the initiative has the backing of the government and the EV market is growing rapidly China could be successful at least domestically.

In the U.S. and Western Europe, it will require all the vehicle manufacturers to play nice which may not be possible.