I am not sure there are many people who want to swap out batteries when they weigh over 1000 pounds. Inserting a battery would require something to help carry and insert it which makes it have enormous user friction which makes it a non starter for most people. Not many people even want to swap out phone batteries despite those batteries being easy to carry.
Not the entire battery. Something in between an individual cell and an entire battery. Small enough to provide practical manual handling and some granularity in total capacity. Big enough that a reasonable number of them add up to a full battery.
Maintenance would be similar to cars today, in that those who change their own oil might be inclined handle their own batteries, whilst those who get a mechanic to change oil might get a mechanic to manage their batteries.
If batteries are cheap enough and long lived enough it's not an issue, but right now battery cost and longevity is a limiting factor. Not everybody replaces their car after a few years. The average car age is over 10 years [1], so there are plenty of cars out there much older than 10 years.
Maybe that's what is behind the sales growth slowdown? Those who replace their cars regularly (fleets) and don't care about battery longevity, are buying. Those who keep their cars for longer are hesitating, limiting the market.
Edit:
It seems like EVs already use a cell/module/pack hierarchy [2]. There's hope yet, if a particular module type emerges as a defacto standard.
You are probably thinking about the whole battery. But if you consider that it can be split into multiple modules, the weight of a module will not be that big.
Benefits of such design will be:
* lower operating weight since you wont need many modules for short trips
* lower registration weight of a vehicle
* the tires and road won't be damaged as much
* one can swap modules at gas stations instead of charging and waiting
* and the modules can be used as part of a house battery
In fact there is an european startup for microcars https://www.helixx.tech/ where they explore similar idea.
People also don't want to swap their own engines or transmissions, but shops will gladly do it for you. I don't think that the need for specialized equipment is a good counter-argument - plenty of car repair tasks require specialized tools.
