What if, instead of charging your electric car batteries, you could change them when they are flat? This is the proposal of CAES, a subsidiary of CATL, which is developing a battery replacement system for electric cars that is more efficient than spending hours waiting for a recharge

Choco-SEB is the name of the chocolate bar-shaped batteries created by the company CAES, a subsidiary of the Chinese CATL, one of the largest suppliers of batteries for electric cars in the world. The technology sector giant seeks to solve one of the biggest impasses of electric cars, the autonomy problem, not by recharging low-energy batteries, but by quickly changing modules at specialized stations.

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Just a minute to change batteries in an electric car

The company even promises to replace one of the discharged modules with another fully charged one in less than a minute, which would make it possible to recover up to 200 km of autonomy for an electric car in just 60 seconds.

Companies operating in the electric car sector have already understood that autonomy is among the main obstacles to expanding technology among most consumers, given that there is a lot of resistance to the use of fully electric models, especially when it comes to longer trips. .

As a result, vehicle manufacturers and even technology companies have been entering the race to find a faster and more efficient way to fill up the car with combustion at a gas station.

Get to know the project better

The Chinese company CATL is one such company. The giant claims that there is already the possibility of replacing a 26,5 kWh battery module in just 60 seconds. That's half the battery capacity of an electric car like the Renault Zoe E-tech, for example.

It's faster than filling 25% or a quarter of a tank, and enough to drive around 200 km, according to the battery maker's calculations. However, the value of the service has not yet been addressed. Each customer can rent up to three battery modules for their electric car. According to the company, the new batteries are flexible, small, minimalist, and with a high energy density.

The solution, which was named Evogo, consists of battery exchange stations made by blocks or modules. To put it simply, an app connects customers to the stations. Best of all, CAES batteries are compatible with 80% of BEV-type batteries offered in the global market, including models that will be launched in the next ten years.

Almost instantaneous battery exchange could reach the Chinese market by the end of this year

The capacity of the exchange stations will be 48 modular cells, each of which will occupy about three parking spaces. The components can be used in passenger cars and even commercial vehicles.

The company did not go into detail about replacement logistics or even how the customer should proceed after using up all the autonomy, since it is a battery rental. Chen Weifeng, manager of CAES, only said that the company plans to launch the solution initially in ten Chinese cities, but he also did not detail which ones they will be.