CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION(S)

This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from Japanese Patent Application No. 2019-039664, filed Mar. 5, 2019; the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.

FIELD

An embodiment relates to a battery charger, a charging method, a non-transitory storage medium, and a battery provision system.

BACKGROUND

In recent years, in consideration of environmental impacts, electric vehicles driven by electricity instead of gasoline have been coming into widespread use. However, there is a problem in that while the distance able to be traveled on electricity is shorter than on gasoline, the time required for charging is long. As a solution to this problem, a system is under consideration such that an on-board battery of an electric vehicle will be replaced with a precharged battery for replacement when the on-board battery has run out of power, instead of charging as conventionally the on-board battery at a charging station.

On the other hand, it is known that nonaqueous-electrolyte secondary batteries such as lithium ion batteries widely used as on-board batteries of electric vehicles deteriorate rapidly with use, resulting in smoking, ignition, and the like. Replacement batteries are used repeatedly by many and unspecified persons, and the usage situations thereof are also various. Hence, the replacement batteries have to be checked for deterioration to prevent the use of any deteriorated batteries. However, the number of replacement batteries possessed by a charging station is limited, and which can cause a situation that there is no replacement battery to offer if it takes long time for checking replacement batteries as conventionally. That is, a situation will occur in which replacement batteries are not ready and drivers visiting the charging station are kept waiting.

