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Comment by outworlder | Hacker News Reader

> I find it amusing to see so many people questioning why Tesla didn't release a cheap Tesla sooner. The answer is: They don't have the batteries to do that. That's why they are building the GigaFactory.

Interestingly (for me), when I leased my leaf the sales guy was talking about how Nissan could make a car with a much better range, but chose not to. It was amusing hearing it from a (otherwise backwards) dealership.

It makes sense, of course. What I keep wondering is, if energy density (not just cost) increases significantly in the future, couldn't existing electric vehicles be retrofitted with "aftermarket" cells? Currently, resale value is pretty low, mostly due to battery concerns (both longevity - which I think is unfounded - and hopes of better tech). But, with otherwise so low maintenance costs, I figure these cars could have a pretty long life.

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> Interestingly (for me), when I leased my leaf the sales guy was talking about how Nissan could make a car with a much better range, but chose not to

Wait, what? How did he justify that? That sounds like saying Apple could easily make a laptop with much better battery life but chose not to. Why would they ever do that?

Apple could easily make a laptop with better battery - it would just be bigger, heavier and more expensive.

Elon Musk claims the same thing about Tesla - that he could easily increase the range on Tesla's cars if they wanted to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsixsRI-Sz4 . But with a range of ~300 miles he thinks they're fine.

It's like when apple got to 7+ hours with battery life, their laptops started getting drastically smaller instead of continuing to have longer lasting batteries. I'd like to have a 400 mile tesla, but I'd like to have a tesla that doesn't weigh 40 tons first.

The current MacBook pro has with about 100Wh the largest battery you are allowed to carry onto airplanes - any larger battery would prohibit it traveling by air. So there is a very good reason not to make the battery any larger.

For the sake of argument, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, HP, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba are among the manufacturers that have managed to release a ~13" laptops with Skylake processors, and Apple still may not next week. They also haven't made any meaningful updates to the workstation Mac Pro since 2013.

I guess he meant that Nissan could just put more battery cells in the car, at the expense of space. Fill the boot with batteries, that kind of thing.

They do have schemes where you buy the car but lease the battery, you'd hope the cost reductions in manufacturing the batteries, and maintaining the battery fleet, would lead to reduced costs for the consumer. Might be a forlorn hope, though.

But I agree, if I was buying an electric car, a standardized battery would be a huge draw.

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