Technical Paper
Vehicle Design, Battery Design and Distribution Model to Implement Battery Swapping in Battery Electric Vehicles, by Drawing Parallels with the Indian LPG-Distribution Network which has Effectively Implemented Cylinder-Swapping Methodology
2016-02-01
2016-28-0024
To increase the range of a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV), a lot of ideas have been proposed. A prominent one among them is the Battery swapping methodology or Rapid Battery Interchange (RBI), where standardized batteries can easily be removed from the BEV and replaced with recharged batteries quickly. The feasibility of this methodology has been highly debated and contested. This paper studies the feasibility of a very popular distribution and maintenance network currently used for LPG distribution in India, to be applied to battery distribution used across different makes and models of BEVs. In India, 33.6 million households subscribe to LPG Cylinders for domestic cooking usage. These standard sized (14.2Kg) cylinders are refilled and redistributed via multiple public sector and private companies.
