This boot has an intriguing concept for EV battery changes

On Wednesday morning in San Francisco, a startup called Ample launched its new electric vehicle battery replacement technology. The company designed an extremely small footprint for its exchange stations, which occupy as much space as some standard parking spaces and do not need much electrical infrastructure. So, instead of building a large site capable of handling hundreds of cars a day, Ample’s plan is to build several small stations, which can be deployed quickly. The first five are already operational in the Bay Area, serving a fleet of Uber EVs equipped with Ample’s modular battery system.

Faster than fast charging

Rightly or wrongly, charging times and charging infrastructure are probably the biggest obstacles to the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. Since the creation of the first gas station in 1905, society has become accustomed to refueling quickly with liquid hydrocarbons. As a result, no one cares if their V12-powered grand tourer fails to make 200 miles before stopping, as they know they will be stopped for just a few minutes.

Battery EVs, on the other hand, need to be sold with as much battery as possible tucked under the cabin, and even the fastest-charging BEVs currently on sale still take more than 20 minutes to charge back to 80 percent – and even so only with 350 kW fast chargers that are still relatively uncommon.

The idea of ​​slow-charging EV batteries and then swapping spent packages for new ones quickly is not exactly new. In 2007, Better Place tried to make the idea work, but EVs were still in their infancy and Israel was too small a market for that to happen. Tesla also tried to do this with a single experimental station midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco that it started testing in 2013. The goal was to exchange a package in 90 seconds, but in practice it took up to 15 minutes and was rendered irrelevant by success of the Supercharger network. And in China, Nio has 131 battery change stations that completed more than half a million battery changes by August last year.

Modular batteries

“The moment you break the battery into smaller modular pieces, many things become easier,” said Khaled Hassounah, one of Ample’s co-founders. “One of them is that the station becomes much simpler. So our station really doesn’t need construction or digging in the ground. All we need is some parking spaces that are flat enough and then a few days – usually a week – we can put a station up and running. Literally, everything is shipped in flat packaging, we set it up on site, test it, turn it on and have the exchange station. example, with several stations in a matter of a few weeks, “he told me this morning.

Each station charges some batteries at a constant rate, so there is no need for the large power demands (or demand rates) that fast DC charging stations require. And since there is no permanent structure, the new stations should not be obstructed by bureaucracy and permits – again, unlike DC fast charging stations.

At this point, many of you are probably thinking the same thing I did when I first heard about the idea: wouldn’t that require significant reengineering of an EV?

“This is a logical conclusion, or prediction, of how it would work. But we are looking to change that in two fundamental ways,” explained Hassounah. “One is that, as our batteries are modular, we really don’t have a shape that we need automakers to adapt to or have to fit into all available systems. Instead, we build what we call the Ample plate adapter. “

Ample obtains the specifications for a battery pack from an OEM and then designs a structural framework for the pack that can accept its modules and still meet all the same engineering requirements as the OEM pack. “It has the same shape, the same screws and the same connector as the original battery,” said Hassounah. Since the modules are already developed, Ample only needs to develop a new adapter card for each new EV model it supports.

But, as the modules are always identical, this means that the stations can service different brands of EV and simplifies the switching process. “Typically, you have the high current connector, the large screws that support most of the weight and everything that needs to be removed. In our case, we are only removing modules in protective buckets, but the large structural piece that connects cooling and high power and everything that always stays in the car, “he told me.

“The second thing that we had to build is the [cell] the chemistry changes slightly between vehicles, and Ample’s first two years were focused purely on that problem before we even built any robots. We built a layer of power electronics in our battery modules – the key is that it is flexible enough, but cheap enough not to change the battery’s economy in any significant way. This allows the battery to now adapt to the vehicle, but also abstract the chemistry “, he explained.

Each new type of EV requires a little software work to get Ample’s battery to talk to the car, but Hassounah told me that there are many similarities, despite what OEMs may say. “When you talk about the communication between the battery and the car, it is very basic. There are five things that they all communicate: voltage, current, temperature, maximum power and maximum regeneration. And, of course, the sequence for turning on and off. But while OEMs are working with you, it only takes a few weeks to update our software, “he said.

What if I receive the damaged battery from someone else?

A frequently heard concern about battery changes (usually in the context of Tesla’s failed experiment) was the problem of Another Person’s Battery. No one wants to go to a swapping station to exchange their new, 100 percent charged battery for someone else’s battery that goes up to 80 percent. The Ample model is more like propane tanks that you can use with a barbecue – it has the modules, which you rent to customers. That way, you’ll never be stuck with someone else’s lemon.

“This really reduces the cost for everyone because it allows us to spread the risk and say that Ample ensures that it maintains quality, but it also distributes the risk so that no one gets a $ 20,000 bill,” said Hassounah.

There is also the tempting possibility of vehicles that gain more autonomy over time, in addition to the improvements that are possible with software updates. That’s because Ample can update the chemistry or design of its modules and implement them in vehicles that are already on the road. Furthermore, modularity means that end users can have some flexibility with how many kilowatt hours – and therefore how much extra mass – they need for a given journey. Reach anxiety – whether it exists or not – means that most people want an EV with the largest possible battery and the greatest theoretical range, even if they take a road trip only once a year.

“So much of your energy is spent moving the battery, even if you don’t need it. With modularization, you can choose how many modules to put in the car, ”said John de Souza, another from Ample. co-founder. Instead of buying a car with 300 miles of lithium-ion on board, a customer can choose to load about half the modules for daily driving and then add extra modules as needed.

For now, these customers will be fleets, not individual drivers. Here in the U.S., Ample is working with Uber, which is renting a fleet of electric vehicles equipped with Ample to Uber drivers in the bay area. And Hassounah and de Souza told me that pilot deployments are underway for Europe and Japan.

List image by Ample