That'd be an interesting situation. They'd probably replace their fleet of batteries gradually, so with each swap sometimes you'd get upgraded, sometimes downgraded. Your range and home charging curves would change with the batteries, and Nio would have to update the battery management software when it puts in a different battery type.

But over time, you'd get upgraded on average without having to pay for a new battery, as long as Nio kept updating to keep its batteries competitive.

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pjc50 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is in fact the main argument to me why swaps would never work at all, economically: the "state" of the battery is a significant part of the value of the car. Being swapped to a worse one makes you several thousand dollars worse off.

It only works in a leasing scenario, and everyone hates those.

	▲	toast0 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think you'd need a contract where you buy (or lease) the car without a battery and lease/rent the battery separately. With some guaranteed offer for a battery with minimum spec X at maximum price Y when you exit the battery program. Preferably, not a mandatory offer, because one hopes specs go up and prices go down over time. Then have you pay something per month for having a battery (maybe depends on the specific battery installed), something per kWh for charge used, plus a rebate per kWh for charge added. Or roll it into usage tiers, whatever. There's lots of people that love leasing cars. I don't understand it, but it makes a lot of people happy?
	▲	sowbug 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I used to own a truck whose fair market value would double, temporarily, whenever I filled the tank.
	▲	cucumber3732842 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		How's that any different than putting new tires on a shitbox?

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xbmcuser 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nio already has a service to swap to higher capacity battery if you want to go on a long road trip etc. It prices its cars according to battery capacity so even people that chose lower capacity car on purchase still have the option to swap to a higher capacity battery. Though I think the main use for battery swap technology will be for commercial trucking and if I recall correctly Chinese government and OEM are working on standardisation for that so all those truck batteries are swappable no matter which company builds the battery.