EV Battery-Swapping Startup That Raised $330 Million Files for Bankruptcy (inc.com) 56
In 2023 Slashdot covered a battery-swapping startup that promised to give EVs a full charge in about the same time it takes to fill a tank of gas.
They just filed for bankruptcy, reports Inc: Ample was founded in 2014 with a goal of "solving slow charging times and infrastructure incompatibility" for commercial EV fleets such as those in logistics, ride-hailing, and delivery, the filing states. To-date, Ample has raised more than $330 million across five rounds of funding to finance research and development and deployment. Rather than tackling fast charging, its strategy involved developing "fully autonomous modular battery swapping," capable of delivering a fully charged battery in just five minutes. The technology requires purpose-built "Ample stations" that look a little like carwashes. A car is guided into the bay and elevated on a platform. A robot then identifies the location of a car's battery module, removes it, and replaces it with a charged module, Canary Media reported.
The company also boasts partnerships with Uber, Mitsubishi, and Stellantis, and notes it has deployed its technology — or is pursuing deployment — in San Francisco, Madrid and Tokyo. Even so, it ran up against funding issues. In its filing, Ample attributed its bankruptcy to macroeconomic and industry headwinds, such as "severe supply chain disruptions," "contraction in both public and private investment in renewable energy" and the "reduction, delay, or redirection of government incentives intended to accelerate EV adoption." The filing notes that regulatory and permitting delays slowed its launch in international markets, after which access to capital foiled its scaling efforts. The company eliminated all but two full-time, non-executive employees after formerly employing about 200...
Electrek noted that Ample is the second battery swapping startup to go bankrupt after California-based Better Place in collapsed in 2013 amid financial issues related to how capital intensive it was to build infrastructure, Reuters reported. And Tesla briefly pursued the concept, building a station in California, before ditching the idea altogether.
Ample "claimed to have designed autonomous battery swapping stations that would be rapidly deployable, cheap to build, and could adapt to any EV design with a modular battery which would be easy for manufacturers to use," notes Electrek's article: Where this bankruptcy leaves Ample's technology is unclear. Another company could snap it up and try to do something with it, if they find that the technology is real and useful. Ample had gotten investments and partnerships with Shell, Mitsubishi and Stellantis, for example, so the company wasn't alone in touting its tech. Or, it could just disappear, as other EV battery swapping plans have before...
That's not to say that nobody has been successful at at implementing battery swap, though. NIO seems to be successful with its battery swapping tech in China, though the company did miss its 2025 scaling goals by a longshot. But as of yet, this is the only notable example of a successful battery swap initiative, and it was done by an automaker itself, rather than a startup claiming to work for every automaker.
Electrek's writer is "just not bullish on battery swapping as a solution in general. Currently, the fastest-charging vehicles can charge from 10-80% in about 18 minutes. While that's longer than 5 minutes, it's not really a terrible amount of time to spend during most stops."
Plus, if cars come and go in 5 minutes instead of 18 minutes, "then you're going to have more than triple the throughput at peak utilization." And Ample's prices would be about the same as normal EV quick-charging prices...
They just filed for bankruptcy, reports Inc: Ample was founded in 2014 with a goal of "solving slow charging times and infrastructure incompatibility" for commercial EV fleets such as those in logistics, ride-hailing, and delivery, the filing states. To-date, Ample has raised more than $330 million across five rounds of funding to finance research and development and deployment. Rather than tackling fast charging, its strategy involved developing "fully autonomous modular battery swapping," capable of delivering a fully charged battery in just five minutes. The technology requires purpose-built "Ample stations" that look a little like carwashes. A car is guided into the bay and elevated on a platform. A robot then identifies the location of a car's battery module, removes it, and replaces it with a charged module, Canary Media reported.
The company also boasts partnerships with Uber, Mitsubishi, and Stellantis, and notes it has deployed its technology — or is pursuing deployment — in San Francisco, Madrid and Tokyo. Even so, it ran up against funding issues. In its filing, Ample attributed its bankruptcy to macroeconomic and industry headwinds, such as "severe supply chain disruptions," "contraction in both public and private investment in renewable energy" and the "reduction, delay, or redirection of government incentives intended to accelerate EV adoption." The filing notes that regulatory and permitting delays slowed its launch in international markets, after which access to capital foiled its scaling efforts. The company eliminated all but two full-time, non-executive employees after formerly employing about 200...
Electrek noted that Ample is the second battery swapping startup to go bankrupt after California-based Better Place in collapsed in 2013 amid financial issues related to how capital intensive it was to build infrastructure, Reuters reported. And Tesla briefly pursued the concept, building a station in California, before ditching the idea altogether.
Ample "claimed to have designed autonomous battery swapping stations that would be rapidly deployable, cheap to build, and could adapt to any EV design with a modular battery which would be easy for manufacturers to use," notes Electrek's article: Where this bankruptcy leaves Ample's technology is unclear. Another company could snap it up and try to do something with it, if they find that the technology is real and useful. Ample had gotten investments and partnerships with Shell, Mitsubishi and Stellantis, for example, so the company wasn't alone in touting its tech. Or, it could just disappear, as other EV battery swapping plans have before...
That's not to say that nobody has been successful at at implementing battery swap, though. NIO seems to be successful with its battery swapping tech in China, though the company did miss its 2025 scaling goals by a longshot. But as of yet, this is the only notable example of a successful battery swap initiative, and it was done by an automaker itself, rather than a startup claiming to work for every automaker.
Electrek's writer is "just not bullish on battery swapping as a solution in general. Currently, the fastest-charging vehicles can charge from 10-80% in about 18 minutes. While that's longer than 5 minutes, it's not really a terrible amount of time to spend during most stops."
Plus, if cars come and go in 5 minutes instead of 18 minutes, "then you're going to have more than triple the throughput at peak utilization." And Ample's prices would be about the same as normal EV quick-charging prices...
No thank you. (Score:5, Insightful)
And if this practice ever comes to pass, I hope companies like CarFax note and heavily ding the vehicle for having it's most major component swapped out when it was just days old. With an ICE vehicle, that would be considered like a **major** collision, and nobody would rightfully touch this car.
Re:No thank you. (Score:4, Informative)
There are just so many problems with the component swapping model.
1. Age of components. As you pointed out, old components could be swapped for new, or vice versa. The way this would be addressed is to reconceptualize the battery hardware as being a consumable like gas, so that it does not comprise a significant portion of a car's value. But that's a difficult sell: it's like saying an ICE gas tank is consumable when it's the gasoline it holds that's consumed.
2. Compatibility of swapped components. How are the car manufacturers going to cooperate to standardize the battery hardware and connections for all the different kinds of cars that are produced? What about differences in capacity for each model? You wouldn't swap a light duty vehicle's battery into a truck, or vice versa. You'd either have to design the system to be modular (swap as many cells as is needed), or you'd have to keep a library of components for different classes of vehicle. All of that would increase system complexity.
3. Availability. The size and complexity of such swapping stations would preclude having them widely distributed. Where would they store all the batteries to facilitate servicing enough cars per hour to make it sufficiently convenient for drivers? And if they are not widely available, they become bottlenecks for adoption and use.
4. Liability. What happens if there is an error and the car is damaged or the driver is injured? Who bears the liability?
These are just a few of the problems I can see, and for what benefit? So that the downtime is cut by...how much? This idea has always smelled like a scam--a bad faith argument pushed by EV proponents to try to convince people to buy or invest in EVs now, because future technology will solve the range/refuel issue. And I say this as a strong proponent of EVs. The idea itself just never seemed to make sense. You'd need a level of coordination and cooperation among manufacturers, consumers, and regulators that simply does not exist and will never exist except in countries where choice and competition are restricted.
Re:No thank you. (Score:5, Insightful)
This idea has always smelled like a scam--a bad faith argument pushed by EV proponents to try to convince people to buy or invest in EVs now.
I disagree with the bold bit. This has never been a thing people serious about EVs have pushed. This is a thing that folks that hate the idea of EVs have pushed as "if they did this, then I'd suddenly be interested." The companies that have (claimed to) make an attempt at it were always scam artists pandering to that crowd, not the people who like EVs and understand them.
That all said, if there was a major manufacturer of fleet trucks and they designed their vehicles for this and had a division rolling it out, that'd be a different thing. A monoculture of hardware, the ability to track inputs and outputs (the "my brand new battery just got replaced with one that's nearly EoL!") and tooling... along with massive battery packs meant for long hauls... that could potentially make sense. But given drivers have limited road-hours per day by law... I'm skeptical even there.
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You're absolutely right, and it sucks that I fell for that trap.
In regard to long-haul trucking, I think there's some merit to the idea of having swappable batteries, since presumably the capacities are larger than in consumer vehicles. But since truckers are already spending stretches of time at rest stops, the benefit is incremental, as you noted.
Along those lines, there might be applications for taxi fleets--short range personal transit where the vehicles are all uniformly the same and operated out of a
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You're absolutely right, and it sucks that I fell for that trap.
In regard to long-haul trucking, I think there's some merit to the idea of having swappable batteries, since presumably the capacities are larger than in consumer vehicles. But since truckers are already spending stretches of time at rest stops, the benefit is incremental, as you noted.
Along those lines, there might be applications for taxi fleets--short range personal transit where the vehicles are all uniformly the same and operated out of a central hub. But again, if the capacity is big enough that a car could just be charged every night, why build these complicated stations?
Totally agreed.
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1. I agree with the challenges of EV swapping, which is why I’m curious to know how Nio make it work in China
2. Long-haul trucking has less need of this than you’d think, because the ladder-frame can fit a heckuva lot of.structural battery in it
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Nio - and many others - made it pretty simple:
The battery is considered fuel. It is not part of the car.
Just like in your torch light.
Or just like 20gallons of gasoline are not part of the car, but fuel in a compartment.
The Nio cars (and others) is made to have its battery simply swapped in a minute or such. Just like refueling.
A random e-vehicle where the battery is an integral part of the car, can not simply be retrofitted for battery swapping.
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I understand this, but the capex of the batteries etc has always made the economics seem very tough to me, ever since A Better Place tried and failed at this a long time ago. And China is pretty big, so the dispersal and diseconomies of scale and network effects seem even tougher
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Thank you. Absolutely the idea that this would be useful for privately-owned vehicles was a scam to try to make EVs sound bad. It is patently obvious that any serious proposal from a company actually intending to make money was to swap batteries in FLEET vehicles. Not private cars, if you think that then you have bought lies from the anti-EV people.
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But both problems are solved now. You can buy a 180 kWh battery [one.ai] for some EVs already, albeit I would not, given the price, but even standard EVs come with 300 miles ranges. And 4C charging (4 times capacity within an hour
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No those "ifs" were never viable or a concern. Even very early in the EV games those with experience with them knew that the range anxiety was largely unfounded and mostly pushed by people with vested interests in EV not becoming popular. The first models of Tesla were just fine for a significant portion of the population even before the first superchargers existed. Certainly not for everyone, but definitely for significant portions of the population in any given city.
The difference is now adays the industr
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Batteries Not Included. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why? By all accounts people are most concerned about the battery going bad. It seems like completely removing liability from the thing the anti-EV people are most concerned about would be ideal for them.
Do you make your own gasoline at home?
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Imagine driving off the lot with a new EV, and swapping your brand-new battery for some *used one*, from god-knows-where, when that battery is half the value of the entire vehicle. No, thanks.
This is the kind of thing that makes zero sense for regular consumers (for exactly the reason you mention), but it could be a great system for companies that operate a large number of cars internally, e.g. UPS/FedEx/USPS, or even car rental places, where a returning electric car can be ready for re-deployment in far less time than it would take to re-charge them the conventional way.
At least fleet cars would keep re-using their own batteries instead of receiving someone else's potential garbage.
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You could do battery swaps for NEVs in a scheme where you didn't own a battery at all, and instead just subscribed to one. You could also do it for heavy diesel truck equivalents, as big diesels typically have the fuel tanks hanging on the outside of the frame where they're nice and accessible anyway. But it doesn't make any sense for the vehicles in between that, i.e. the bulk of them...
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I see a problem if the deposit is less than the value of the battery. If the deposit is equal or exceeds the value of the battery then it is exactly the same cost as if you bought the first one. I suppose you could say you get the money back when you get rid of the car, but that means cars have to be sold or scrapped without a battery which makes them much more difficult to move around.
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In my mind you'd be buying a car without a battery and simultaneously subscribing to a battery service, but if you ever wanted to own a battery you could buy one. You'd get the battery delivered to the dealer (and/or they would work with one or more services directly and keep some on site) before you picked up the vehicle so it would be all the same to you as if it had come with it, and it would also come charged.
Moving them around without a battery at scrapping time is not a detriment, as vehicles to be sc
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No need to imagine, you have been able to do that for years. Nio has had battery swap stations running for some time in Europe, and they are great.
Faster than pumping dino juice, and the battery get is guaranteed to meet a minimum, high specification. Never heard of any problems, but if there were you would just swap it out again for a few Euros.
You have infinite battery warranty too because if you did ever manage to put enough miles on yours to wear it out, just get it swapped.
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Imagine driving off the lot with a new EV, and swapping your brand-new battery for some *used one*, from god-knows-where, when that battery is half the value of the entire vehicle. No, thanks.
I imagined it. I imagine I would drive around until it's flat and then drive to the swapping station and get another one, this one may be brand new one from someone who just drove it off the lot and did its first swap.
Your entire premise is stupidly short sighted. When you use a device which intrinsically swaps something as part of its function, that swapped piece does not form part of the value of the device as its age varies with its consumption. It also doesn't form part of the typical maintenance as the
Not enough money adn wrong market. (Score:2)
The best way to try this would be to build an Electric Bus company and also build stations designed to replace the Bus battery.
Then sell both to cities. Once you have the stations up and running, offer deals to car companies to use the same station for free. (The car companies get the service for free, the car owners would have to pay to replace the battery)
But trying to build a battery replacement system when cars are not designed to have their batteries replaced is stupid.
As expected (Score:3)
Battery swapping is bad for many reasons
Batteries are big and heavy and often integrated into the structure of the vehicle. Making them swappable requires more weight and complexity.
The swapping robot is also big, complex and expensive and keeping it maintained is difficult
Battery quality varies, you may get swapped a dud
This is the worst possible solution to the problem
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Fair points, but one comment:
Battery quality varies, you may get swapped a dud
There are ways to monitor the health, age, and usage of a battery. Sort of like the odometer and other service monitors in a car. If swapping catches on, I would expect to see such battery monitors become ubiquitous, and attached right to the battery.
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You don't think they can manage to redesign a car that accepts a standardized component such as a battery?
Swapping can be a drive in, drop the battery and be pushed/pulled one car length forward to pick up the charged battery. Or the old and new battery are rolled under the car on a conveyor and the new is picked up by the car.
As the battery charger business they would not want not have customers stuck with a dead battery a mile down the road. Even your cheap phone kn
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You don't think they can manage to redesign a car that accepts a standardized component such as a battery?
Why do you think cellphones don't have user-replaceable batteries any more?
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Planned obsolescence?
I used to keep my laptops and mobile phones for longer, when I could just do a simple battery switch. At times I even had a spare battery, so if my device was running out of juice, a swap and I was good to go.
Irritating to have a power bank nowadays. And powerbanks for laptops are too inconvenient generally.
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Nio has been doing it for years in Europe and China, and it doesn't seem to be a problem. Their cars aren't heavier than other similar ones, and the robots are reliable. The look like a car wash, and it takes about 3 minutes to do the swap. Don't even need to get out of your car.
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ob disc: I used to work for nio usa.
batt swap is a great idea and its been done well. tesla tried it for a very short while and gave up. too bad.
one use case not always mentioned: you run out of juice and you are too far from a charging station or maybe you are in a hurry or just dont mind paying the convenience fee for a local drive-up swap. yes, they can do that. you can be on your way with a 'full tank' in very short order. no idea how common it is; usually you drive to one of the swap garages and i
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Nio has been doing it for years in Europe and China, and it doesn't seem to be a problem.
Nio has precisely 25 of these stations across the whole of Europe. Don't pretend this is in any way an example of something commercially viable.
Their cars aren't heavier than other similar ones, and the robots are reliable.
Their robots are fine, but their cars are heavy tanks. The ET7 is the only Nio that is supported on the few charging stations in Europe and it's heaver than some significantly larger SUV EVs on the market. Given how many EV companies fundamentally design the battery pack as a part of the structural support for the vehicle for support and weight reasons, your view th
Turned out to be a non issue (Score:3)
Battery ageing isn't turning out to be nearly as bad as predicted and is getting better all the time, the batteries today will be the worst ones produced. Chemistry, cooling, BMS and construction are all improving every year I think we are already close to having 70% capacity for 200k miles which is pretty inline for ICE engines (which also lose MPG with age and cold).
Now to be clear if it's me in charge I am making a law that batteries have to be replaceable but swappable for consumer vehicles is a dead end. Commercial and industrial I think there's more of a case.
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Battery ageing isn't turning out to be nearly as bad as predicted and is getting better all the time, the batteries today will be the worst ones produced.
What makes you think that EV manufacturers will optimize their profits by both penny pinching battery production cost (making them worse) while at the same time also profiting from selling replacement EVs sooner (than if the battery had survived for longer). We may soon pass (or have already passed) "peak battery lifetime".
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Customer demand, they are improving battery ageing because it's a thing customers care about. Why do car companies now with gas cars use "reliability" in advertising? Why are they pointing out the battery packs have a long warranty? Why is the drivetrain warranty longer than the general one?
Cars are still a competitive market, reputation matters. We all know Toyotas are more dependable than Dodge.
I could even take a different cynical approach where they want long lasting batteries so they can double and
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Battery ageing isn't turning out to be nearly as bad as predicted and is getting better all the time, the batteries today will be the worst ones produced. Chemistry, cooling, BMS and construction are all improving every year
For many shelf life rather than miles driven is the limiting factor. Without a doubt people can and have racked up hundreds of thousands of miles on a single battery in a short number of years. While this sounds impressive it isn't a relevant metric for most drivers. What really matters is what happens to the average driver who takes 15... 20 years to reach that same 200k miles?
I think we are already close to having 70% capacity for 200k miles which is pretty inline for ICE engines (which also lose MPG with age and cold).
70% capacity is way below the 80% industry cutoff for lithium battery life. The issue here is not reduced capacity in and of it
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All car's require maintenance, if a certain amount of usage is what it takes to maintain a long battery life that's the same as any other car. A gas car that sits unused and unmaintained also breaks down.
That's also my other point where I think it has to be regulated to where batteries are replaceable and refurbish-able, I can pull most cars in off the street and with some labor get a new working motor in there, we need that type of parts supply for EVs so the batteries have to be replaceable, even if it r
one falls another rises (Score:2)
Ample may have failed, but perhaps Samething or Goompere will find success.
Probably the reason the company failed was that they did not fully embrace AI.
Just not much of an issue (Score:3)
for local trips I don't go to high speed charging stations. honestly if we focused more on level 2 chargers being ubiquitous that would be far more effective for folks who can't charge at home. If every restaurant, bar, grocery store, movie theater, had level 2 chargers you would be able to easily keep your car topped up and at a much lower cost than the high speed chargers.
When I use high speed chargers it is for road trips and saving time would be nice, but my car does 20-80 in 18 minutes on a good charger. With the upcoming generation of cars that will be the standard and some coming out are going to be even faster. I rarely have to stop for long enough to go to the bathroom and grab a snack and if the folks who can't charge at home had more ubiquitous access to L2 charging they wouldn't be relying on these high speed chargers either.
All of this is to say that the batter swap, which would still take time, just doesn't have the consumer advantage. Add to that the overhead of the infrastructure and the need to get multiple companies standardized and it's just not going to be a thing. It might have had legs if charging had stayed as slow as it was on the old EVs but that is just not the case
Betamax vs VHS (Score:2)
Nissan/opel wanted to do this decades ago. I'm thinking they cannot agree on a standard.
There are no "slow charging times" any more (Score:2)
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On a journey, I just precondition my battery (heat it up by pressing a button), and stop for a coffee.
In my Tesla, once the navigation system knows that I am headed to a Supercharger, it automatically turns on pre-conditioning at the appropriate point in my journey.
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I don't think you quite understand.
I set the navigation to where I need to get to. The navigation system will add necessary stops at Superchargers, and, without pressing any buttons, will automatically start preconditioning based on my expected arrival at the Supercharger.
Nothing is standardized (Score:2)
I keep wanting this for a long time, as it makes sense for Fleets, Buses, delivery vans and the like, but until everything is standardized, similarly to the 12 volt lead acid battery, to be the same shape, size, voltage, etc, and make it easy to replace, it'll be a pipe dream. Right now it's the wild west, with differing standard for charging port design, including where the port is placed on the car, let alone pack design. I don't see it happening until we are forced to by a governmental standards body.
I don't want to swap an entire battery (Score:2)
But I could be convinced of the utility of small, modular battery *boosts*. Kind of like how electric mowers have a bank of 6-8 batteries.
That way, you can do traditional charges normally, but you can also stock up on these boosters in an emergency to get a little extra range, or if you're planning to be off the grid and want a safety net.
This whole problem goes away... (Score:2)
...if you can charge from a 220v circuit while you sleep. In that case you wake up to 250+ miles of range every morning. More than enough for pretty much every day.
If I'm going to drive more than 200 miles, I'm going to stop for a bathroom and some food every couple hours, and a 10-15 minute top-up is no big deal.
Battery swap is a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.
Of course, if you don't have that luxury where you park at night, or if you drive 8 hours at a time with a diaper on, stick with
this already works in some places... (Score:2)
for everyone saying 'this won't work' or you can't trust the batteries, etc there are taxi fleets already doing this. and changing the battery is faster than it would take to fill up a tank of gas.
So maybe the business model didn't work for this particular company, but it can work for others:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Got to have EV's designed for fast swapping.... (Score:2)