There's also the concern of who owns the batteries and who's responsible for their maintenance. There are lots of states of battery between "good for 100% of rated range" and "dead, doesn't work at all"
A trucking company presumably would not be happy if they stopped at a swap spot and got a battery that's only good for the next 200 mi because of normal battery degradation.
There's also now the problem of who owns the batteries that come off a truck - if the battery swap station is a generic service provider, that suggests that some battery network actually owns the packs themselves - does that mean that the swap station needs to keep that battery around until another participating truck company contracted with the owner of the pack comes around?
That seems very complicated.
Or maybe the swap station is the owner of the packs (think gas station chains) - in which case they can put the battery on any truck that comes next... but that means duplicative swap stations for every battery chain out there. There's only so much land accessible to highways... so even more complicated that way.
The "pull the battery out and charge it" part of the idea is oddly enough the simplest. The logistics and chain of responsibility is far more difficult.
A trucking company presumably would not be happy if they stopped at a swap spot and got a battery that's only good for the next 200 mi because of normal battery degradation.
There's also now the problem of who owns the batteries that come off a truck - if the battery swap station is a generic service provider, that suggests that some battery network actually owns the packs themselves - does that mean that the swap station needs to keep that battery around until another participating truck company contracted with the owner of the pack comes around?
That seems very complicated.
Or maybe the swap station is the owner of the packs (think gas station chains) - in which case they can put the battery on any truck that comes next... but that means duplicative swap stations for every battery chain out there. There's only so much land accessible to highways... so even more complicated that way.
The "pull the battery out and charge it" part of the idea is oddly enough the simplest. The logistics and chain of responsibility is far more difficult.