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Comment by lima

Battery swapping is a dead technology, it is simply not economical. It is too expensive, much harder to scale and incompatible with cell-to-chassis designs. Industry barely managed to agree on a charging connector!

Meanwhile, battery longevity is essentially a solved problem. Manufacturers do have an incentive to improve it due to customer demand, and modern NMC chemistry, cooling and BMS have improved significantly to the point where they're expected to maintain 70-85% capacity after 10 years[1], far from worthless. At this point, components like the motor likely fail before the battery does.

Given the much lower failure rate of everything else in an EV, TCO is dramatically better than ICE cars even with degradation[3].

Manufacturers like Mercedes even guarantee 70% health after 8 years (a worst-case estimate).

There is a significant commercial incentive for aftermarket battery repair shops. EVClinic[2] is very successful and a glimpse into the future.

[1]: https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/

[2]: https://evclinic.eu/

[3]: https://evclinic.eu/2025/12/31/diesel-mythology-vs-ev-realit...

parent lima 9 months ago

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