Ample's Next-Generation EV Battery-Swapping Station
Electric Vehicles
Speaker 1: Imagine you're driving your EV and you realize you're just about outta juice, but you don't have 30 minutes or maybe even an hour to spend charging your battery. Now imagine you could come to a drive-through like this and swap in a brand new, fully charged battery in about five minutes. Feast your eyes on this next generation battery swapping station from startup. Ample. You may recognize ample and its technology. [00:00:30] We got a look at its first gen station last year. The idea of swapping batteries on electric vehicles isn't exactly new. The technology is already available and growing fast in China, and there have been companies that have tried in the US only to fail, but ample has been quietly growing since its launch in 2021 with its first generation robotic swapping stations popping up around the San Francisco Bay area and partnerships with Uber and Last Mile delivery startup Sally. Now the company is ready [00:01:00] to swap out the old for the new.
Speaker 1: At first glance, some of the upgrades are pretty obvious. The new stations are now large enough to fit large delivery trucks, and it's a drive-through model as opposed to the previous stations that required a driver to exit the same way they entered. But maybe the most significant improvement is speed. It takes a first gen station about 10 minutes to complete a battery swap. The new station cuts that time in half to just five minutes. That's probably not much longer than it takes to fill your gas tank. If you drive a non-electric vehicle, [00:01:30] there's no EV on the market that can get to a full charge that quickly. And you might be asking, what kind of cars does Amples technology work with? The answer is just about any ev.
Speaker 2: We're the only company in the world that has a way to separate the car from the battery chemistry. What that means is we can make any car work with any battery chemistry, which allows us to make the batteries function in a way like gas. When you look at gas, no matter which car you come in, you put the same gas into it without technology, we're able to do that with batteries as well.
Speaker 1: Ample accomplished [00:02:00] this by creating its own interface tray about the same size as a battery under the car where the battery would go. Inside those trays are battery modules containing non-proprietary battery cells. During a swap, a driver rolls onto the platform, which raises so the robot can easily reach the bottom of the vehicle. The robot unlocks a tray that's locked under the car, removes it, and replaces it with a fresh tray. The drain units can then be recharged at the station and swapped in for the next customer. [00:02:30] Ample says they designed the new stations to be fast and easy to deploy.
Speaker 2: There's no construction involved. You can place this on the ground and you can deploy a station in three days. It comes in prebuilt parts. You go through, connect them, test them, and and you're up and running.
Speaker 1: Ample just announced a partnership with Fisker maker of this EV right behind me to put its battery swapping technologies on Fisker vehicles. Meanwhile, you can expect to see amples new swapping stations in the US later this year, as well as Kyoto, Japan and Madrid. So what do you think of these swapping stations? You wanna see one in [00:03:00] your city? Let me know in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to CNET for more with the future.
