I'm not sure why you have a problem with this. Swapping batteries enables those people who want to make long trips to do so without having to stop and wait for their batteries to recharge. You swap out the discharged batteries for fully charged batteries and go. Meanwhile, the batteries they left at the recharge station get recharged, then swapped into another customer's vehicle, and the cycle continues.
As far as running vehicles on electricity, I disagree with you. It can be done and there are multiple ways to do it beyond batteries, and for the average American who doesn't do much more than going to work and the grocery store, the present options are more than viable, with the exception of cost for some people. At some point, the decreasing cost of electric vehicles will intersect with the rising cost of gas-powered vehicles. When that happens you will suddenly see a lot more electric vehicles on the road. At the rate new cars are increasing, this might happen sooner than we think. The commercial solution might be powered by catenary or third-rail. Freight has been moved in this country with electric locomotives in the past and is currently used in several cities around the world to reduce local air pollution. It probably will not be used between Denver and Sacramento where there are long distances of rural land, but it would certainly work up and down the urbanized regions of the East Coast. Also, trucks and buses can be powered this way too.
https://www.trucker.com/trucks/mack-trucks-shows-ehighway-electrified-tractor
And the possibility that super capacitors may make battery technology obsolete
https://www.iflscience.com/technology/graphene-based-supercapacitors-could-eliminate-batteries-electric-cars-within-5-years/
You've missed my point entirely - it has nothing to do with battery technology at all. Of course I understand the intent of battery swapping, and as I said really nice electric cars have been around since the dawn of the automobile age. Look up a Detroit Electric. My dad has a very nice Focus electric, as did a coworker.
The issue is trying to extend that to the entire automobile system Go to one of those large gas stations and watch how many cars fill up in a day - each one of those is going to be hours. When do you catch up? each of those batteries still needs a huge amount of energy put back into it, which will take a lot of time. If you want to decrease the time you must have an incredibly high instantaneous power, using higher voltages and higher currents. The equation for power loss is amps squared x resistance, so increasing current greatly increases losses. So the whole efficiency thing goes out the window if you want to charge fast.
So everyone will charge at night is the usual answer, and we can do this because the power grid has excess capacity then. This sounds great to MBAs
who get taught to believe in something for nothing, but in the real world that translates to pushing an antique, poorly maintained power grid to a greater percentage of it's capacity all the time. This leads to something called catastrophic failure. Transformers and lines cool down during off-peak, etc.
You might think then that we'll increase capacity, though we've been unable to afford that for decades now. This is what the "smart grid" was all about - we can't afford to add capacity, so instead we've overlaid a high speed communication grid so we can push the old pig harder. Just more neglected infrastructure.
Also, electric rail is not at all the same issue, as it isn't "automotive" - it doesn't carry a stored energy source, it runs on an extension cord (catenary). This is and has always been quite viable. If we built this out, small EV's and electric bikes would be a fine way to get from home to the local station.
Just for reference, I'm an electrical engineer who's spend over 30 years designing products for the electric utility industry, including switch mode power supplies and battery chargers.
I wonder what would happen to the grid if everyone plugged in at night?
See above. Trying to push any system to capacity all the time leads to failures - doesn't matter what kind of system, be it highways, or plumbing or engines, when you push it to max capacity all the time things break in spectacular fashion.
Last hydrogen is the most abundant element on Earth. There is no free hydrogen on Earth. You must put energy into breaking molecular bonds to release the hydrogen, so it is just another form of battery. OK, I'll quit now.