remove the depleted batteries and replace them with new fully

charged ones. The whole process takes about 10 minutes. It's

called battery swapping. San Francisco-based Ample is

bringing the idea to the U.S. The company was in stealth mode

for seven years before launching recently with five swapping

stations in the Bay Area.

The plan is to be available wherever people need a fast

charge that's as cheap as gas.

The benefits of swapping over charging are numerous. When

you're fast charging, you are degrading the battery at a much

faster rate than if you slowly trickle charge a battery.

The concept is not new. Better Place launched an EV and battery

swapping company in Israel, but the company went bankrupt in

2013, even though it had almost $1 billion in funding. And Tesla

gave it a try in 2013.

Took 90, sort of 90 seconds for a pack swap. So hopefully this

is what convinces people finally that electric cars are the

future.

Battery swapping is already common in China. Electric

Vehicle maker Nio plans to double its network of swapping

stations to 500 this year, and plans to open battery swapping

stations in Norway as part of its expansion into Europe.

Geely, another Chinese automaker plans to build 200 swapping

stations in China by 2023.

Almost every taxi in Beijing that moved to electric is being

swapped. So there is a significant swapping happening

in China. We just don't know about it here because we haven't

yet had the problem of moving a very, very large fleet into

electric.

But these swapping stations are expensive, and it's unclear

whether American car owners would be willing to swap out

their EV battery.

In America, if we're buying a car dammit, we want to buy the

battery that runs it.

But Ample has a different approach.

We've really taken the EV battery pack and broken it down

into much more manageable batteries.

But why now? And can battery swapping be a good charging

solution here in the U.S.?

Nio, Tesla and Better Place all use the same technique. That is

removing the entire battery pack and swapping in a new one. The

batteries are usually then charged off site, but EV

batteries are massive. And this is part of the reason why

swapping stations have historically been so expensive.

You have challenges there. If you're connecting a 900 pound

thing, then you have to have really really robust electrical

connectors that can handle a few 100 volts and have some dropped

in and out dozens hundreds of times over the lifetime.

But Ample is trying a new technique. It is building its

own batteries designed in these Lego-like modules that charge

right inside the battery swapping station.

The main thing that sets Ample apart is that we have a modular

battery. With our modular batteries, we can take them out

a few at a time and they're very light, they're very easy to

maneuver, the station is the size of two parking spots, so it

doesn't require a lot of square footage since the batteries can

be individually put on a much smaller rack to charge.

I think part of thing about the modular batteries is it is

largely the ability to fit into different sizes. If it's a big

car, you can put in more a small car has less. So it solves a lot

more problems than we initially thought about by going through

and doing it.

We were not allowed to film the proprietary tech inside of the

charging station, but we were able to take a peek. Behind this

wall there are robots zooming around taking fully charged

battery modules off of shelves and then replacing them with

depleted batteries from the car. The new batteries are then

quickly but carefully screwed back into the car. And within

minutes the fully charged card drives out at the station. The

station is fully autonomous and the payment is done through the

app. Ample's Bay Area stations cost the driver about 10 cents

per mile for a swap which is less than gas in the area, but a

bit more than traditional charging.

The car isn't, you know, perfectly centered where it

needs to be, the robots will move it to the right spot. So

there's it's very easy for anyone to just drive up and park

on the platform.

Ample battery stations are designed to be installed quickly

along high traffic routes. Former Tesla manager Lindsay

Stone is in charge of deployment.

We build in our office here, what we call sub assemblies, we

build chunks, take them to the site, we create them up, ship

them over and then assemble on site so there's no construction,

there's no digging.

How much does it cost to build one of these.

We can't give the exact number but I would say in a tens of

thousands of dollars. So effectively the equivalent of

maybe a slightly expensive level two charger.

One of the major benefits to ample swapping station is that

it does require a lot less power than our traditional plug in

charging station.

This is because ample slowly charges the batteries and can

control when they are charging. This also helps ensure the

batteries are being charged with renewable sources, not fossil

fuels.

The benefits of swapping over fast charging or that you can

charge when it makes sense for the grid. So when someone pulls

up to charge, they need to pull that energy from maybe not

always sustainable resources versus with swapping stations,

we're constantly slowly charging these batteries. And so we can

really plan around when we can use solar energy or wind energy

to make that charge happen.

Plus an ample station could eventually also provide power to

the grid.

That stock of batteries that's being charged, can actually also

be used as stationary storage. When the utilities are hitting

peak loads, there's a known set of batteries that are going to

be sitting there, they can draw off those batteries to help do

some load balancing on the on the grid.

But in order to use an Ample station for swapping, the car

actually needs Ample's batteries in it. It builds custom plates

for each car manufacturer it works with and then fits the

batteries into the plate. The plan is for the car buyer to

choose whether they want Ample's batteries in their car, or the

manufacturers battery pack depending on their needs.

Almost every automaker in the world, build the car separate

than the battery, right so the battery is a device unit because

they know this is probably the weakest part of the car will

need to be replaced in service, etc. But if you build a drop in

replacement to that battery, then you don't need a

significant engineering effort from the automaker side. So the

way we build our system is you build an adapter plate, which is

defines how many modules you put in the car, how they're

distributed, how they interface with the car, so that the car

itself doesn't need to change the software or hardware in any

way whatsoever.

The company says it is already partnered with five EV

manufacturers, but it would not disclose which ones. But while

we were filming a Nissan LEAF pulled up to get a swap.

We're very easy to kind of stole our system takes 15 minutes to

get a car ready to be swappable. And then as we scale to 1000s of

cars, then we act just like another supplier.

Most OEMs have very similar setups on their batteries, they

have several main connectors. And then all we do is just

identify where the mounting points are of their battery pack

and make sure that our plate mounts to those same points on

the car. Straight from there, figure out what the packaging of

our battery modules can be within that geometry. There's

not really any limit on that, right? We can do that for a van,

we can do that for a truck.

I think a lot of people who kept on saying you'll never be able

to work with OEMs is very hard to work with. And I say we've

been very surprised with how willing they've been open to

they realize the problem.

The global electric vehicle battery swapping market was

valued at $100.1 million in 2020. And is projected to reach

$852.6 million by 2030. But some are skeptical this will take off

in the United States,

It's a 5050 you might get a newer fresher battery than the

one you've already put 52,000 miles on, but you might get

someone's 52,000 mile battery swapped into your six week old

car. In theory, they would have to keep them within some kind of

range. But especially in America, we'd like to buy stuff,

we like to own stuff, and that includes the battery.

This could be why the company is initially focusing on fleets

with sights set on individually owned EVs next.

It's a great option for a fleet that needs to have its cars on

the road for as much of the day as possible. And where quick

refueling is really vital to being able to have the fleet go

electric in the first place. It's also I think, a good option

for customers in cities who don't have a good place to

charge. They don't have a garage to plug in at home. Those are

kind of the two primary customers that we see right now.

Ample said it has a range of last mile delivery municipal

fleet and ride sharing partners including Uber. Uber drivers in

San Francisco can rent an EV equipped with Ample's battery

built in. That driver can charge using conventional methods or

had to one of Ample's five stations in the Bay Area to

recharge.

Ride sharing. In general, it's difficult for a driver, they

often don't have a charger at home. And you could be spending

10 hours a week charging your vehicle, which means you're just

making effectively making less money.

Where it actually does make the most sense is for commercial

fleet users. They're usually all the same kind of vehicle. So you

could have a swap station that, hey, you have a stock of

batteries that fits all of your vehicles in your fleet. And that

would make a lot more sense. And the nice thing about swapping is

it can be done very quickly it can be done in three, four or

five minutes.

One interesting thing with fleets as well, is a lot of the

fleets have are committed to electric but as soon as they

start deploying it, it starts falling apart for different

reasons. It might be that they have to upgrade the amount of

electricity in all the depots which should be costly or the

this logistics of figuring out when to get the cars and how to

go through and charge it falls apart. As we speak with fleets,

they've tried it. They know what the challenges are. So when we

present our solution, they can quickly see how it solves the

problems they have.

President Biden said he wants to transition the entire

presidential fleet to electric, which is about 645,000 vehicles.

But even Ample admits that the US may be slow to adopt the

technology. Do you see adoption happening faster outside of the

US?

Sadly, yes. You talk to a lot of fleets in the US that actually

do want to make the transition. You talked a lot municipalities

that are already making the transition. So the interest is

there. But the actual adoption has been happening more

elsewhere.

The next phase of the plan is likely some more deployments

internationally, there are a lot of customers interested in our

solution to the the AV infrastructure problem and in

Europe and Asia.

To move from fleets to individually owned EVs, Ample

would need to get automakers and car buyers on board to replace

the custom battery in their EV with an ample system. Automakers

pride themselves on their unique battery tech. So it's hard for

some analysts to imagine that this will take off.

If you're a car maker, the battery in your electric car is

a major, major structural element. It has structure going

through it lengthwise and crosswise that are major parts

of the cars crash protection, that are part of its overall

shell, you're not going to want to use a standardized battery

format. It's part of the structure. It's the heaviest

component in electric car. Manufacturers are just not going

to do that. Forklift manufacturers? Okay, fine. Not

carmakers.

I think it's very unlikely that any automakers are going to