In today’s world speed is everything but those that need to fill up an electric vehicle battery require patience. That’s because even the fastest chargers take quite a while to fill up a battery from near empty to full. Ample is aiming to cut that time by simply swapping in a fully charged battery in less than five minutes.
Some may remember the days when smartphone batteries were swappable. Back then one could keep a battery topped off at all times and go from low to full in less than 5 minutes without ever needing to be tethered to a wall. That technology ultimately fell out of favor as fully-sealed batteries became the norm. For cars, it could be worth the potential trade-offs though.
Over the years, it’s been the next great step for EVs many times. Famously, Tesla’s Elon Musk bragged that his company would incorporate it at one point only to abandon it. Ample might have a leg up on the rest of the competition though and it could end up making an EV fill up faster than it would take an ICE car to top up at a gas station.
Read: Fisker Ocean To Get Swappable Battery Pack, Promises To Be As Fast As Refueling With Gas
What you see here is Ample’s second-generation battery swapping station and it sounds pretty neat. “Approaching the Ample station, the car is recognized by the station, and its door is automatically raised. Once perfectly parked inside, the driver initiates the swap from the Ample app on her phone. Five minutes later, the driver is back on the road resuming her work day,” the company says on its site.
Ample isn’t simply content with solving the actual battery swap problem itself though. It also believes that its battery swap station is an innovation that could take off. It consists of a modular design that can be constructed in just a few days either as a single standalone bay or as multiple connected bays. If it can indeed build these stations and deploy functioning battery swap technology it could revolutionize the way many view electric vehicles.