Battery Swapping Systems - From a business oriented analysis to a practical case study

The thesis deals with the concept of Battery Swapping System (BSS). A BSS is an alternative technological infrastructure to the charging process of Electric Vehicles (EV) of any kind and dimension, trying to solve problems affecting many stakeholders in the process while obtaining equivalent final result. In this paper I tried to blend more abstract and general considerations to business-oriented concepts and practical applications and implications. Nowadays, Electrification of powertrains is increasing year on year and it is quite clear that this scenario in the long term will dominate market sales, imposing itself as the dominant paradigm of green mobility. On the other hand, the electrification process brings the attention to some issues to be solved, first of all which infrastructure and complementary technology to invest in, in parallel with EVs diffusion curve. Today wired charging, private or public, is the most widespread form of charging, however it has many drawbacks and probably will not be able to support the rapid growth of EVs, leaving the door open to other solutions for the future. Among all possibilities, explained in the paper, the decision to focus on Battery Swapping was taken since this solution, right now, allows to gain the highest benefits, satisfying simultaneously the needs of all the stakeholders and maximising the process efficiency from almost all points of view. The paper can be virtually split into two parts, a first section whose aim is to collect and put together online and offline information on the topic, exploiting a funnel approach starting from the broader concept of EV state of art and paradigm and ending with detailed battery swapping dynamics, passing through complementary technologies comparison as alternatives as well. After bringing the attention to the chosen technology, the second section focuses on an ideal practical application of BSS, introducing a specific case study on heavy-duty trucks (commercial road transport) in Italy with a focus on market sizing and business model analysis. The choice of this mean of transport was made considering how well and easily could it fit a battery swap infrastructure. The goal of this case study is to simulate a heavy truck driving on two paths across the whole country, exploiting a BSS built using FlexSim software, under many ideal assumptions clearly stated. The final aim of the simulation itself was double, on one side to test the maximum traffic flow the basic model could bear and, on the other side, to modify the model so as to find the best solution according to monitored output parameters, solution to be then compared qualitatively to the optimum that would ideally come from a traditional wired charging solution or even a traditional powertrain (ICE), in terms of cost, time and energetic demand. So, based on quantitative results obtained from the specific simulation under all the assumptions and based on the qualitative more general academic research on the topic as well, I have been able to draw some conclusions. This paper addresses a highly innovative topic for our country, really practical and useful for our immediate future. It opens the door to further investigation, in particular to the building of more customized and accurate models. The kind of results ideally coming from those experiments would be extremely beneficial in the final evaluation of the adoption and investment of such a technology in our country.