On a sunny Thursday morning in San Francisco, a driver pulled a Nissan Leaf into a building, parked on a platform, and stepped out of the car. Then the platform lifted the car in the air. Robotic arms carefully pulled out the electric car’s batteries and placed fresh, fully charged batteries inside. The whole process took around 10 minutes.

Ample, the startup that designed the station and runs a dozen more like it around the Bay Area, now does hundreds of battery swaps each day.

The cost of charging varies depending on the cost of electricity at that time of day, but the company aims for its service to match or cost less than the price of fuel for a gas car.