Ample, a San Francisco start-up, wants to make sure that the battery of electric vehicles in the United States can be replaced and avoid a history of failure in space.
When electric vehicles gained ground in early 2010, Tesla and a start-up called Better Space promised that all of their customers would have the convenient option to change the battery.
“Hopefully this is what will finally convince people that electric cars are the future!” Musk said, gathering a crowd during a rousing demo in 2013, before sending them off to enjoy a party. On that demo, Musk had said that the battery of a Tesla Model S can be replaced in about 90 seconds.
But both companies failed to make swaps commercially viable – Better Place closed in May 2013, despite raising $ 850 million in venture capital, and in June 2015 Musk claimed clients weren’t even interested in swapping of their batteries.
Meanwhile, electric vehicle companies improved their battery and charging station technology so that their cars could drive more miles on a single charge, and owners could spend less time charging at charging stations when they were not charging at home or in hotels overnight.
Ample’s modular batteries for electric vehicles.
Spacious
Why now?
But Ample thinks the time is right to try again.
Ample now operates five battery changing stations in the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically for Uber drivers. Participating drivers with assisted electric vehicles can replace a dead battery with a fully charged battery in less than 10 minutes. At launch, Ample will support the Nissan Leaf – the main electric vehicle used by Uber drivers, and some Kia electric vehicles, but will not support Teslas or many other popular EV models. The stations currently have a maximum capacity of 90 cars per day.
Ultimately, Ample hopes to enable the exchange of all electric vehicles.
While EV batteries have improved over the past decade, Ample believes swapping will be popular among fleet managers, delivery drivers, service and hail drivers. They log hundreds of miles a day and don’t want to wear out their batteries by quickly recharging them every service, explained Ample founder and CEO Khaled Hassounah.
Hassounah said his company’s approach is technically different from previous efforts.
The company has spent about seven years developing robotics that can remove dead battery modules from a car’s battery pack and replace them with fully powered modules in less than 10 minutes. Ample can replace just a few modules in a pack or all modules, depending on how much of the battery has been drained and how far it needs to go before returning home for an overnight recharge. In the past, companies trying battery swaps only exchanged the whole package, not the individual modules in it.
Drivers can sit in the car or get out and stretch their legs while the switch is completed. The company is aiming to have time for a trade of less than 5 minutes this year.
Spacious battery swap stations are designed to be installed quickly along a route – they are prefabricated and assembled wherever they want, but do not require complicated construction or permits. They only take up about two parking spaces.
Like most companies in the emerging electric vehicle field, Ample also wants to reduce the environmental impact of power generation for the attack of electric vehicles in and outside the US.
“With some sort of continuous battery update, a 10-year-old car can go about as far as the latest model to hit the market this year,” he said.
Hassounah explained, “Electric shouldn’t be a difficult decision … But it should be cheaper and simpler because we’re not yet competing with gas.”
By removing and recharging dead batteries during off-peak hours, or by using electricity from renewable energy sources to recharge them before being replaced, Ample can help fleets meet environmental targets and spend less on electricity.
The co-founders also said the swap should ensure that used electric vehicles stay on the road and perform perfectly longer, rather than turning them into e-waste.
To date, the company has raised $ 68 million in venture capital led by the venture arm of a fossil fuel company, Shell Ventures, joined by Repsol Energy Ventures and ENEOS Innovation Partners, energy companies facing disruption as governments push for broader acceptance of electric vehicles. Transportation and Mobility Investors Moore Strategic Investors and Hemi Ventures also invested in Ample.
Ample’s battery changing station for electric vehicles.
Spacious
Challenges
John Voelcker, former electric vehicle researcher and car writer, says any attempt to replace batteries in North America will face justified skepticism.
“Changing batteries presents enormous challenges in terms of capital requirements,” he said. “As with bike sharing, it’s not evenly distributed. It might make sense to have stations along a particular route, but the demand can increase dramatically while traveling, such as during Thanksgiving. They’ll move heavy batteries from one place to another. the others have to move to make this work. ”
Scott Case, the CEO of Recurrent, a Seattle start-up that measures electric vehicle battery health, said, “It’s definitely a pro that you can upgrade your battery over time without paying for a brand new one. But there are some risks that are a bit low-tech when you take batteries out of your car over and over, like dealing with dirt and grime from the road that can get into your system. ”
Ample says it designed around this, in part by including a battery monitoring system on each interchangeable module that can alert a driver if there is a problem, and only shut down the affected module until the car can be swapped.
Hassounah and de Souza know they are dealing with doubters. But, said the CEO, “We’re making a big transition, a third of human consumption of energy is moving from one form to another. And every time we make those kinds of changes, we have to step back and rethink things. ” For Ample, that means revisiting a good idea that didn’t work out, but should have been possible.
The company is not completely alone. A high-tech EV maker, Nio, has managed to launch a battery swap service for its customers in China. Shares of NIO are up more than 1,000% in the past twelve months, even after a recent drop amid a wider sell-off.