Fast charging or battery replacement, which is the future of electric vehicles?

As the development trend of future consumer-grade transportation, electric vehicles have been receiving continuous attention from all walks of life. In order to encourage the development of electric vehicles, some regions have provided a package of support policies from preferential policies for car purchases to unlimited travel, and have vigorously developed electric buses, electric patrol cars and other similar transportation tools.

However, there are still some problems with electric vehicles during use, such as charging, driving range, battery life and capacity decay, as well as daily maintenance, etc. For potential customers who are interested in purchasing electric vehicles, they still need to weigh their own needs from multiple perspectives, especially for business people who often need to travel long distances, so they should be very cautious when choosing electric vehicles.

Due to the bottleneck in the development of battery technology and considering the structure of electric vehicles themselves, fast charging technology has become one of the options for electric vehicle endurance. The latest data currently shows that an electric vehicle can be charged to 80% in 30 minutes. Although it takes longer than refueling, considering actual needs such as parking and rest, 30 minutes of charging time is acceptable.

However, fast charging technology is accompanied by serious reductions in charging safety and battery life. Currently, most fast charging technologies convert AC power into DC power and increase the charging voltage to achieve fast charging. However, fast charging will cause frequent migration of the positive and negative electrodes of lithium ions, which will not only cause certain damage to the battery cells, but also cause the battery temperature to rise and reduce the battery life.

Compared with fast charging technology, battery replacement is relatively less time-consuming. At present, it is mainly used in taxis, logistics vehicles and other fields with large single user volume, which can use economies of scale to reduce equipment investment costs. In the field of consumer electric vehicles, BAIC New Energy and NIO have proposed their own battery replacement models. Of course, some people have proposed solutions such as separating the car from the battery and renting the battery instead of selling it.

However, battery replacement poses problems such as inconsistent battery quality (for example, different battery lifespans and battery capacity attenuation). It is difficult to unify the cruising range during specific use. If the car and the battery are completely separated, how to ensure battery safety is also a major problem. In addition, there is currently no unified standard for technical safety issues during battery replacement.