Electric Motorcycle With Swappable Batteries

One drawback for electric vehicle technology is charge time. If your traditional gas engine runs low, you can refill in a few minutes. Pure EV vehicle batteries can take hours to recharge. Even Tesla Motors’ much lauded expansion of its Supercharger network still takes more than 20 minutes to fully charge the company’s Model S electric vehicle. Two designers have a concept that could solve the charging time problem.

Designers Olegs Zabelins and Pavels Sevcenko have come up with a possible solution, showcased in their recent Nirvash electric motorcycle concept. Instead of recharging, you just swap out the batteries. That means you could be on the road in less than 10 minutes, and the “hot swap” replaceable batteries could lower production and maintenance costs.

The six batteries could be removed and replaced in a honeycomb-style structure accessible via a removable side panel.

The idea isn’t new. Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, floated the idea for for the Model S in 2009, according to Autoblog. His vision was for robotic arms to remove the large, spent battery and replace it with a fully charged one in about a minute. While that hasn’t happened, the use of smaller, owner-replaceable batteries for vehicles like motorcycles hasn’t lost steam.

Below is an image of the Nirvash concept. You can view more images here.

Source: Tuvie, Autoblog