Battery swapping

Volvo launching a new SPA3 platform, which is the EX60 platform, a new cheaper version.

And then we're going to talk about battery swapping.

But before we do, I just want to mention, because I get some emails sometimes.

I'm like, Fred, since you upgraded to hardware 4, you kind of forget about us hardware 3 people.

They don't put their badges on the car itself, but they are...

They are the technology behind a bunch of Chinese EV brands right now.

And they announced that they are joining the CATL coalition for battery swapping station.

So they're going to standardize their battery pack to match the CATL battery swapping station.

You know, they, they're always generous with us, but at the same time for a documentary it was expensive.

One of the other kind of standout bombshells in the film, at least for, for me, was finding out about the zero emission vehicle benefit that Tesla received for these battery swap stations-

Yeah

... that could extend the range of a Tesla in the amount of time that it would take to fill up a gas tank, but the battery itself was over 1,000 pounds, and only a single swapping facility was ever created, and yet the company banked 100 million in ZEV credits.

He wrote a wonderful book called Ludicrous, which was about the kind of the myth-making at Tesla, and he pointed that out, and then a, a short seller named Lawrence Fossi, who's interviewed in the film, also pointed it out as something that he saw.

It, it's really a magnificent moment.

It's like going to Magic Castle and seeing, like, "Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat." It's like there's this battery swap, which if it had been real, and maybe it was real once, okay, but i- if it had been real, the idea that you could go into a gas station and swap out your battery as quickly as you'd swap out double A batteries in a flashlight would've solved the whole issue of electric cars, which is range.

But he does it once in this demo, which is, you know, he, i- it's a set.