A Chinese electric car designed for battery swapping has dropped its entire battery pack while driving down the road.
Several EV companies have tried to make battery swapping, an alternative to charging, a reality, but they have mostly been unsuccessful – except in China.
Some Chinese EV companies have had some success. For example, Nio has around 1,500 battery swap stations in China and it has reportedly performed over 22 million swaps.
But a new incident shows the importance of robust safety for swappable battery packs as an EV was seen losing its battery pack on the road in China:
The vehicle appears to be a Cao Cao 60, an electric vehicle built for Cao Cao Auto’s ride-hailing. Cao Cao Auto is a Geely company, which also owns other brands like Volvo and Polestar.
The company launched earlier this year, and it designed the Cao Cao 60 to have a swappable battery pack in order to limit charging time and make sure to optimize the time the vehicles could actively participate to the ride-hailing service.
It is not available to the public, but according to Car News China, drivers in Cao Cao’s rideshare program can purchase the EV for 119,800 yuan (17,500 USD).
While driving on the 2nd Ring Road in Chengdu, Sichuan province, a Cao Cao 60 was seen dropping its entire battery pack. It’s unclear if it had recently performed a battery swap.
Based on the video, it looks like the car was able to roll another 20-ft or so before stopping after dropping the pack.
Geely had previously claimed that the Cao Cao 60 could perform a battery swap in less than 60 seconds or about three times faster than a Nio.
Well, it looks like it can remove the battery pack even faster than that if it needs to.