Is Nissan's $9,900 Quick-Charger a Breakthrough for Electric Cars?

Battery swap absolutely has an advantage over quick charge. For one, you can swap as many times a day as you want without worrying about stressing the battery. For two, swapping takes 2 minutes regardless of charge state and you don't even have to get out of your car. For three, responsibility for the battery's health is no longer the driver's concern (and potentially the up-front cost of the pack comes out of the vehicle's sticker price).

One would expect swapping to be useful near city borders, where you can pick up a fresh pack before venturing out into the suburban jungle. Also great for fleets like taxis and delivery vans since even a 30-minute quick charge means the vehicle is out of service for 30 minutes.

Swap's problem is getting battery standards adopted. If every make and model of EV has a different battery pack then the swap model is a bust even if those batteries are capable of being swapped. This puts more focus on fleet use where all your EVs are likely to be the same.

Quick charge still has a place, but I don't think it's highway use. Quick charge is still going to be best implemented as destination charging. I just don't see people stopping for a half hour break every 60 miles or so (less than an hour's worth of highway driving) when they're traveling long distance. Spending 30%+ of your travel time at rest stops will suck.

@Smidge204
Other advantages of battery swapping:
1) All batteries must be identical for all manufacturers
2) You get to pay $5million to build your swapping station
3) You get to purchase the property which will be well located so it should be quite expensive
4) You get all of the heavy-duty mechanical material handling equipment necessary to quickly yet safely swap out these 500 lb battery packs and move them between the swapping facility and charging/storage facilities
5) As new, better battery technologies become available, swapping stations will get the pleasure of dealing with obsolete technologies that nobody wants -- or else drivers will get stuck with what the swapping stations give them, making travel planning much more difficult since you'll never know how far you'll be able to go before having to swap again.
I agree that Quick Charge has no place for highway use for minimal range vehicles such as the Leaf and "i". But then, again, I don't think Battery Swapping every hour is going to work either. In other words: minimal range EVs such as the Leaf and "i" are only useful as commuter vehicles.
IMHO, an EV needs at least a 3 hour driving range (~200 miles) before it is reasonable to think that most people will be taking them on the road with either swapping or quick charging. 4 hour or more will be even better.
Only Tesla's approach to swapping and Quick Charging makes any real sense. You'll be able to quickly swap your short-range battery for a rented long-range (300 mile) one before heading out on a trip. This will be fast chargeable at 90 kW (not Nissan's wimpy 50 kW) for a 45 minute charge about every 4 hours during normal human bio breaks.

Reducing the cost of a quick charge station from 30k to less than 10k is a big step in the right direction. Not sure that I would call it a breakthrough. There is still a large expense to get one installed and as others have stated the monthly demand charges will also be expensive.

Now if EVERY Nissan dealer in the country would install one of these and have it available to the public 24x7 now that WOULD be a breakthrough.

KJD
http://www.evalbum.com/3175

@Smidge904
It seems like your costs may look cheap compared with a gas station, are huge compared to a DC fast charging station. $1M could buy perhaps 10 to 20 of them. If deployed intelligently, this could cover all of CA for 300 mile Teslas.
I agree with your battery capacity observation. That is why I complain about the money we're wasting on 50 kW CHAdeMO chargers when 90 kW ones wouldn't be much more expensive to install but would be sustainable.

I'm also in the "DC Quick Chargers are preferable to Swap Stations" camp. I do, however, see a use for the latter.

We were just talking here on another thread recently regarding the possible dangers of lithium battery packs that get damaged in an accident (delayed fires, etc.) Logic dictates that there will be an increasing need for removal, safe sequestering and storage of such battery packs. For the most part, auto body repair shops are probably not going to be set up to do this.

Having a single swapping facility per city (or more, depending upon the size of the metro area) will fulfill this need, as well as one of the already intended purposes of fleet vehicle maintenance. For many of the other reasons already stated above, though, I tend to think that strategically placed DC quick chargers are going to be the most convenient and cost effective way to go for the average EV owner who are on the go

@Steven,
I didn't nail it, Tesla did! . . . or at least they're talking it now and may in the future.
As far as charging times for a 300 mile Leaf though, this is a complex issue:
1) With the current Leaf battery technology, a 300 mile battery would weigh between 3 and 4 times as much as the current one. I don't know if the Leaf can even carry that much weight or if there is room for it.
2) If Nissan re-designs the Leaf to handle a 300 mile battery, they could also conceivably design it to handle the same 90 kW or more charging speed as Tesla. This would allow it to charge in 45 minutes as well (actually 80% in 45 minutes, 100% in 1 hour)

Regarding Better-Place's influence on N-R: I think it is pretty clear that the only reason N-R CEO Carlos Ghosen switched from being anti-EV to committing to build them was completely because of the efforts of BP's Shai Agassi. He and a few of his Israeli captains of industry friends who know that an oil-based economy isn't really good for Israel convinced Ghosen and committed that Israel would commit to N-R EVs as a pilot market.

It will be interesting, however, to see how much of the battery business N-R is willing to cede to BP but I guess those two will have to work that out between themselves.

Providing QC and Swapping capability just requires that the battery design involve sufficient cooling, control, and current capability to handle the faster charging. It also requires that the mechanical design folks position the battery in an easily accessible manner. The initial design costs will probably be higher to handle Swapping but this shouldn't affect cost too much down the road. Batteries that support QC can be more expensive, depending on how fast they will charge and whether the designers chose to sacrifice battery life if fast charged by not providing enough cooling, control, or copper to keep the batteries happy.

Clearly, Ford is just taking the same simple, cheap, non-committal nod to EVs that they did in the '90's, probably hoping that EVs get killed again so they can continue business as usual. The FEV's sacrifice of trunk space and lack of QC support indicates their attitude. I'm certainly not going to go out of my way to support them.