A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
If you've ever driven long distance in an electric car, you know how much of a hassle it can be to recharge the battery. You pull off the highway for a charging station, plug in the car and wait - wait, wait, wait. If you're lucky, it's only half an hour, but, you know, it's often longer. In China, though, recharging can be as fast as filling a gas tank. NPR's John Ruwitch got the story from the back seat of a car.
AUTOMATED VOICE: (Speaking Mandarin).
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOOR CLOSING)
JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: I'm sitting in an SUV made by the company NIO. We're parked by a small structure that looks kind of like a one-car garage without walls or like those places where you might get a quick oil change. But there's no oil. The driver, Jason Wu (ph), an executive at NIO, talks to the car.
JASON WU: (Speaking Mandarin).
AUTOMATED VOICE: (Speaking Mandarin).
WU: (Speaking Mandarin).
RUWITCH: And just like that, the car takes over. First, it instructs him to take his foot off the brake.
AUTOMATED VOICE: (Speaking Mandarin).
RUWITCH: And not to open the doors or touch the steering wheel as it backs itself into the port.
WU: (Speaking Mandarin).
RUWITCH: This is fully automated battery swapping, Wu says. The car is about to get a fresh battery. No more waiting to charge up. NIO has recognized that long charge times are one of the main reasons keeping people from buying EVs not only in China, but all over the world. So it's installed nearly 4,000 battery swap stations around the world. Most are in China, of course.
WU: (Speaking Mandarin).
RUWITCH: The NIO executive Jason Wu says in February, the company hit a milestone, completing 100 million battery swaps since the service was first rolled out in Beijing eight years ago. NIO says it saved drivers more than 83 million hours.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR BEEPING)
RUWITCH: The car we're sitting in has stopped, and you can feel it lift up a tiny bit and jostle around. Under us, the gray metal floor opens up, and a machine rises to the undercarriage.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY BANGING)
RUWITCH: The battery weighs about as much as a grand piano. It's unfastened and whisked away underground into a kind of storage room that's part of the swapping station, where it'll charge up for another customer.
WU: (Speaking Mandarin).
RUWITCH: The process takes a couple of minutes. Wu says that swapping batteries is convenient, fast and safe. And when you're swapping, you don't need to get out and fuss with cables or gas pumps. NIO owners have the option of buying or renting the battery in their car.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY BANGING)
RUWITCH: NIO's cars are popular in China, but they're not the top brand, and battery swapping is still something of a novelty. But it's a novel solution in a country where many drivers live in apartments that don't always have charging ports. It's also good on road trips. NIO has put over a thousand swapping stations along China's highways.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY BANGING)
RUWITCH: Meanwhile, back in the car, a fresh battery is lifted into place and bolted securely to the vehicle.
WU: (Speaking Mandarin).
RUWITCH: The system runs some diagnostic checks, and that's it.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINE BEEPING)
WU: OK. You can see green light. (Speaking Mandarin).
RUWITCH: We pull out, and a screen on the swapping station shows how long the whole process took - 3 minutes, 1.26 seconds. About as long as it takes to fill a tank of gas and less time than it took you to listen to this story.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINE BEEPING)
RUWITCH: John Ruwitch, NPR News, at a car battery swapping station in Beijing.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUN THE JEWELS SONG, "ALL MY LIFE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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