Should you use one over the other? It all comes down to which EV charging is most practical for you.

EVs are taking over the car market faster than anyone could have predicted. EVs are selling out across all manufacturers, and automakers are struggling to produce enough vehicles to keep up with the demand. But the question on everyone's mind remains: what's the best way to charge an EV?

Well, you might not even need to charge it. There is an alternative to charging, and that is battery swapping. But what is EV battery swapping, and how does it compares to conventionally charging your EV?

One of the greatest benefits of driving an EV is that you never have to stop at a gas station unless you want to buy a snack at the station's convenience store. In terms of refueling, you can say goodbye to those annoying weekly gas station pit stops.

All you have to do to keep your EV going is to charge it at home. EVs include a Level 1 charger from the manufacturer, and all you have to do once you get home with your new EV is plug it into a conventional 120V outlet and begin charging away.

A typical L1 charger like the one you get from your EV manufacturer will be able to recharge approximately 5 miles of range per hour. This is not the fastest method and will be good for about 50 miles of added range once you wake up in the morning. This is great if your daily commute is less than 50 miles, and you don't have to worry if you need more juice.

Level 2 chargers can also be installed in homes, and these run off of a 240V outlet. Once you have an L2 charger professionally installed in your home, you can enjoy charging speeds much faster than 120V Level 1 charging. With an L2 charger, you can recover approximately 32 miles of range per every hour of charging, according to EvoCharge.

Another method for charging your EV is a Level 3 fast charger or a DC fast charger. These chargers can recharge your car to 80% in about 20 minutes. Of course, this depends on your vehicle's charging capacities, as some vehicles can recharge faster than others, and others have larger battery capacity.

Nonetheless, these chargers are extremely fast and are supremely useful for situations when you find yourself on the road, ready to travel long distances, and need to stop to recharge quickly. However, these chargers can't really be installed in your home (yet!), but they are slowly popping up all over the US (you can use an EV charging app to find one), ensuring that EV drivers needn't worry about how much range their vehicle has left.

EV battery swapping is the polar opposite of charging your EVs battery through a charger or charging station. With battery swapping, you swap out your EV battery for a completely charged one, eliminating any long periods associated with having to recharge your EV.

Not only is this method extremely fast, at around ten minutes for a swap of a fully charged battery, but it's also potentially more environmentally friendly than public battery charging stations. One of the great things about battery swapping is that the depleted batteries removed from cars are then charged slowly by the battery swapping company, and these companies can actually choose when to charge them and with what kind of energy.

Because these companies, like Ample, choose when to charge the batteries, they can take advantage of clean energy sources, which isn't always the case with public fast chargers or even home chargers. In the case of Ample, they use an innovative modular approach that replaces your vehicle's OEM battery for their modular batteries.

Once your vehicle's modular battery is depleted, all you have to do is drop by an Ample battery swapping station, and the entire swapping process is done autonomously. Ample uses robots that remove the batteries from your vehicle and replace them with fully charged units.

Mass adoption of this idea is still far off, but this method would benefit fleets of vehicles that are in constant use for a company, especially because the total time to recharge your battery via swapping can potentially be much quicker than recharging it. The battery receives better treatment because it is recharged slowly instead of fast chargers. Fleets of heavy vehicles, like EV pickups, would definitely benefit from battery swapping.

This is obviously quite dependent on the specific needs of the consumer, but there are some advantages to charging your vehicle, as well as some great advantages to using battery swapping. Using an EV charger is the most widespread method to charge your vehicle. Many companies have worked hard to set up massive charging infrastructures across the US, like Tesla's Supercharger or Volkswagen's Electrify America stations.

Many consumers have also made their home EV ready by installing an L2 charger. The EV infrastructure already in place guarantees that you'll run into one of these stations in most places you travel by car, which isn't something that can be said about EV battery swapping stations.

Another advantage to charging is that you'll most likely be doing it in your home while you sleep, which isn't feasible with swapping.

That's not to say EV battery swapping doesn't have inherent advantages as well. Once (and if) it becomes more widespread, the advantages might lure many people to this service, although it will require heavy investment from EV automakers.

Swapping is much better for fleets of vehicles that need to recharge quickly and do so many times a day. Fleets like this will benefit from the fast swapping of batteries, and their batteries will also benefit in terms of lifespan. Vehicle owners using battery swapping stations can also rest assured that their vehicle is actually being charged with renewable energy sources because, ideally, that's where the energy to charge the depleted batteries would come from.

Both methods have great applications for different consumers. It wouldn't be crazy to think about a future where both technologies coexist, especially with EV battery swapping serving a more commercial customer base.

On the other hand, the average consumer will continue to enjoy the use of regular charging stations during their daily commute and occasionally use EV battery swapping during long road trips.

Alex is a major car nerd who loves programming, writing and playing the piano. He graduated with a bachelor's in Computer Science and currently enjoys freelance writing full-time.

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