Ample raises $160 million on the promise of battery swapping

Battery swapping has long been a dream solution for the infrastructure problem standing in the way of wide electric vehicle adoption. Tesla famously tried but then abandoned the idea half a decade ago. But now a startup called Ample has raised $160 million to try to make it work — first for commercial vehicles, then maybe passenger cars and SUVs.

Given the approach Ample founders John de Souza and Khaled Hassounah are taking, they’ll need every one of those dollars, and then some.

The goal with Ample is to convince automakers to make versions of their electric vehicles that have a sort of adapter plate instead of a full battery pack, while everything else stays the same. Then Ample plugs a bunch of battery modules into that adapter. The...

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