Key events in the development of battery swapping since the Gilded Age

Auto pioneers consider the exchange of depleted batteries with fresh ones as a way to extend the operating range of early rudimentary electric vehicles, from streetcars to delivery trucks.

General Electric Co teams up with local partners in Connecticut to launch a "battery service" that enables electric vehicle owners to swap batteries for a modest monthly fee and a variable per-mile charge. Other similar services spring up in large cities. Semi-mechanized swaps take as little as three minutes at some stations. And by separating the battery from the vehicle, the service helps lower the initial cost by a third or more.

General Electric's GeVeCo battery service is discontinued. Waning demand for electric vehicles and the lack of interest in industry-wide battery standardization stall further development of electric vehicle battery swapping for more than 80 years.

Silicon Valley startup Better Place develops a "battery switching" process and signs up Renault-Nissan for pilot projects in several countries. 

The Beijing Olympics showcase a fleet of 50 electric buses featuring swappable batteries. China's Wanxiang demonstrates an electric bus with swappable batteries at the Games.

Better Place is invited to meet with officials of the state-owned China Grid to discuss battery swapping. China Grid ends the talks without a deal.

The same issues that helped kill the decades-earlier GeVeCo serefvice, notably lack of interest by consumers and vehicle manufacturers, catch up to Better Place. After raising, and burning through, more than $600 million in investors' money in just six years, the company files for bankruptcy.

Tesla offers a limited battery swap service for the new Model S, which was designed from the start to accommodate swappable batteries. The swapping process is arduous ("a pain in the ass," recalls a former Tesla executive) and the pilot program is quietly retired in 2015. Tesla CEO Elon Musk orders his team instead to turn its attention instead to building out a proprietary network of charging stations called "superchargers."

Nio is established in China, with satellite operations in the United States and Europe. In 2017, it announces a plan to offer customers the option of swappable batteries, a service that it begins in 2018.