This is what I'm referring to as "housing on the books" you've got this insane infrastructure that goes beyond simply charging.
I also agree, how much time are people willing to spend to save money and the answer is, a lot. Grows quite rapidly lower on the economic ladder you go.
To be fair, it's not saving 5-10 minutes. A Tesla supercharger still takes ~15m for only 200mi. To go to full charge, you'd be saving an 30-45m easy. If all the bays are full, 2-3 hours?!
But to agree with you, if you put the battery swap next to a charging station and charged less for the charging station (because less infra), how many people would be willing to simply take the lower cost and wait a bunch of time? Quite a lot I'm afraid.
So the car I am most interested in is the Ioniq 5 which is rated at a 10-80% charge time of 18 minutes. Sure it is not a completely full battery but largely that isn't necessary. But I think the major issue is that technology advancement necessary to reduce overhead costs for battery swap stations will only make charging more appealing, because the only way to reduce the number of batteries required in stock is to be able to charge them faster. So even though right now it might save you 30-45 minutes right now for a full battery, it would cost significantly more. As charging times decrease it will start saving less and less time but still will cost a premium.
This is what I'm referring to as "housing on the books" you've got this insane infrastructure that goes beyond simply charging.
I also agree, how much time are people willing to spend to save money and the answer is, a lot. Grows quite rapidly lower on the economic ladder you go.
To be fair, it's not saving 5-10 minutes. A Tesla supercharger still takes ~15m for only 200mi. To go to full charge, you'd be saving an 30-45m easy. If all the bays are full, 2-3 hours?!
But to agree with you, if you put the battery swap next to a charging station and charged less for the charging station (because less infra), how many people would be willing to simply take the lower cost and wait a bunch of time? Quite a lot I'm afraid.