What is mechanical charging of electric cars?
Mechanical charging is to replace the battery pack, that is, the rapid replacement of the battery pack, and the purpose of charging the battery pack of the electric car is achieved by directly replacing the battery pack. The quick replacement time of the battery pack is similar to the refueling time of the fuel car, which takes 5-10 minutes. The quick replacement can be completed at the charging station and the swap station. The electric car battery does not need to be charged on site, but the on-board battery of the electric car needs to be standardized, that is, the battery The shape, capacity and other parameters of the electric car are completely unified. At the same time, the structural design of the electric car is also required to meet the convenience and speed of replacing the battery.
Due to the heavy weight of the battery pack, the professional requirements for battery replacement are strong, and professionals need to be equipped to quickly complete the replacement of the battery pack with the help of professional machinery. The main equipment of the power exchange station is the battery removal and installation equipment.
The electric car user parks the car in the designated area of the charging and swapping station, and then uses the equipment for replacing the battery pack to remove the battery pack that has been exhausted and replace the battery pack that has been fully charged. The entire battery replacement process is generally within 10 minutes, which is very short. For the replaced battery, it can be charged at the charging station, or it can be collected in the battery management center for maintenance and charging. The quick-change method of battery pack has the following advantages:
(1) Electric car users can rent fully charged batteries and replace batteries that have been exhausted, which is conducive to improving the efficiency of car use and improving the convenience and speed of users.
(2) The replaced battery can be charged in the low valley period, which reduces the charging cost and improves the operating economy of the car.
(3) From another perspective, the quick battery replacement method also solves the problems of battery charging time, stored charge, maintenance, driving range and price.
(4) The problem of the single battery in the battery pack can be found in time, which will have positive significance for the maintenance of the battery pack, and reducing the depth of discharge of the battery pack will help improve the service life of the battery pack.
Although the quick battery replacement method is feasible, there are still many problems to be solved:
(1) High cost. Such battery replacement systems are costly and require expensive mechanical equipment and a large number of batteries.
(2) It takes up a lot of space. Due to the need to store a large number of uncharged and charged batteries, a lot of storage space is required. The space required to build a battery charging and exchanging station is much larger than the space required to construct a normal charging station or a fast charging station, so the initial cost of such a battery exchanging system is high.
(3) Inconvenient management. Since there are uncharged batteries and charged batteries, the batteries need to be classified and stored separately, which increases the difficulty of management.
(4) Standardization of batteries and electric cars, standardization of car battery pack design and easy replacement.
(5) Issues such as improvement of electric car design, construction and management of charging and swapping stations, and battery circulation management.
The electric car battery pack quick replacement mode is only suitable for dedicated charging and swapping stations. At present, there is no unified standard for the electrical and dimensional parameters of the car power battery, and the market application still needs to wait for some time.