Egregoros

Yeah, I've seen those. But I think there's a really good chance that the technology will just never really make it in industry.

Currently the best charging speed in a production vehicle is like 6 minutes. Swappable batteries can beat that, somewhat, but there's a lot of complexity here for very little gain. You have high voltage contacts which can weld or corrode, you have lifting and installation of large physical objects which is inherently dangerous, and then you end up with this question "who owns the battery?". I don't think 6 minutes of charge time for 0 to full is so painful that this tech is going to justify itself.

Then you might think "what about excavators?" You can't drive them to a charging station every time you want to fill them up, so surely you'd prefer someone to come by with batteries and swap them twice a day... Well, they're stationary, so you don't really need those batteries to snap in, they can be a trailer that's parked next to the machine and connected with a long cable. Then all you need to do is support simultaneous digging and charging.

Perhaps the only place where will really truly shine is on machinery that runs for only a few days out of the year and sits the rest of the time. For example, if you're a farmer, you might swap batteries between your tractor and your combine, because you're not seeding and harvesting at the same time... And the battery sizes that will be needed for agriculture will be absolutely bonkers. Another one is if you have a semi truck and you typically do only short haul but you want to rent a secondary battery to make a long journey...