Dongfeng Technical Center demonstrated a "smart battery changing station" in Wuhan, capital city of Central China's Hubei province, on Nov 26 - the first of its kind in the city, according to local media reports.
With the smart battery changing station, located in Wuhan Economic & Technological Development Zone (WHDZ), it only takes three minutes for a car to change battery.
It is expected that 50 such battery changing stations will be set up in Wuhan next year. They will mainly serve electric vehicles in the city and will be open to the public soon.
The large-scale battery changing station with an investment of 3 million yuan ($455,700) can serve more than 200 vehicles per day.
Dongfeng Technical Center is currently engaged in the R&D of a light-duty battery changing station that only requires an investment of some 1 million yuan, and which can serve about 10 vehicles per day.
On Nov 26, at the Dongfeng Technical Center, engineer Huang Hongbo drove a Dongfeng electric vehicle into the structure called a "smart battery changing station".
After stopping, the lift under the wheels slowly raised the platform where the car was parked. The car was raised from the ground to a height of about half a meter. From the half-meter high seam, only some criss-crossed poles could be seen, moving under the car. These poles were robots that can change batteries.
According to Huang, one robot unloaded the old battery, and the other robot immediately installed a new one. Just after the old battery was removed, the new battery was installed almost synchronously. A total of more than 300 kilograms of batteries takes only three minutes to remove and install.
For vehicles whose batteries have been replaced, the fees they need to pay are also simultaneously entered into the back-end system and sent to the driver. The driver can pay online at any time and obtain an electronic invoice.
