E motorcycles are not even in the same planet for weight and size comparison. Also voltage. EV car batteries hold huge amounts of voltage (exponentially more than an electric motorcycle battery) and something as simple as mishandling could lead to deadly results while doing something as routine as swapping out the packs. Plus architecture. Batteries aren’t under the hood; they’re in the floor pan. There are lots of reasons. Formula E racing doesn’t use modular batteries; they swap the driver over to a new car when they pit. If modular batteries were feasible; they’d be doing it already.

Grab and go batteries for what exactly? Lead acid batteries for gasoline powered motorcycles or batteries meant for electric scooters and mopeds?

For starters when I saw modular batteries I mean batteries in which you can swap out individual cells as the original post suggests, not whole batteries you can swap in and out of a vehicle. Secondly though car makers could standardise batteries between them this would severely limit them in many ways. We like to think of batteries as the equivalent of a gas tank in an internal combustion car but that's not exactly the case. Yes batteries store an amount of power inside but the role of the fuel pump is also up to the battery, that is the rate at which it can charge or discharge has to do with the battery. Moreover the weight and shape of the battery changes from manufacturer to manufacturer and in many cases the battery housing serves as a structural member. This means that not only the capacity and therefore range are determined by the battery but also the charging times, power output, vehicle handling and weight distribution and chassis construction. So if you limited manufacturers on using a specific set of batteries, they'd all basically have to make the same cars, just with different looks. Two cars using the same battery but different electric motors would still have the same maximum power output at the wheels which is limited by the battery, a stronger motor wouldn't be able to draw power at a faster rate to output more power to the wheels.

There are multiple YouTube videos of people fixing battery packs for free or nearly free where the dealers insisted the whole thing needs replacing. In one case it was just a dirty connecting plate.

But this applies to most car repairs. $3 microswitch on the lock assembly failed? Sorry, you need a $300 lock assembly. Oh your turn signals stopped working because of some oxidation on the column contacts? Well we could spray 20¢ of contact cleaner on it but instead we want $1000 to replace the stalk assembly.

Could go on and on.

>Government could fix this, but won't because captured capitalism.

This was a sarcastic post, right?

Have you seen the size of these batteries? Have you heard the precautions or watched how they're disassembled?

They're 480V. That's a terrifying voltage, nearly insta-death.

They're massive modules with loads of balance wires.

The 'gubberment' doesn't need to do anything- anyone can build a battery to fit there if there is an advantage for it.

This isn't a gas tank pressed between two plates, or a 'chopper' show where they beat some aluminum and weld it to hold gasoline.

This is a massive piece of critical engineering with extremely fatal consequences.

Frack, Boeing stuffed something in their planes and they caught fire because they didn't do it right.

Okay if it's not a battery then it is just a cell.

Making the batteries smaller individual containers would absolutely add a lot of weight which is already a massive problem for EVs. One large battery pack acts as a structural component so breaking it up not only means adding additional weight for the additional casings, it also means eliminating battery capacity and also adding brackets to structurally attach them to each other (which is both heavier and weaker than one large casing).

This is also an odd thing to nitpick. Battery cells themselves are modular and different manufacturers are using like cells depending on the origin of those lithium cells. This is not unlike battery packs in things like power tools, those battery packs are just containers around cells like this: https://www.samsungsdi.com/lithium-ion-battery/power-devices/power-tool.html

These 3.6 or 3.7 volt cells are more or less the same across all brands (Dewalt, Milwaukee, Ryobi, etc) and if you wanted to you could open those batteries and replace cells. Similarly, people can and do open up EV battery packs to replace battery cells. So long as you k ow what you are doing when you rewire them and don't kill yourself touching a large capacitor they are repairable and replaceable components.

Are you just as upset that you can't for example, swap brake pads between cars? Or intake manifolds? Or that there are a million variations of a spark plug?

EV batteries are genuinely terrifying, even experienced industrial electricians get nervous working on them. Not only do you have the insane power potential that could easily kill, but if something does go wrong you have a fire that burns incredibly hot for days that's near impossible to put out.

This is not a government, issue. Yes they're are problems with capitalism but you need to stop blaming all your issues on it. This has nothing to do with greedy corporations, this is actually a real issue with safety.

To combat waste that'll probably be what happens pretty soon. Currently each manufacturer is racing to make the battery with the largest range at the cheapest cost to get ahead in the market. Once we reach an inflexion point (my guess is 2025) then maintenance will be something customers really focus on.