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Comment by powerbroker | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps a new problem -- that of stealing the more valuable batteries, might emerge?

That's approximately the same sort of operation as stealing the engine of a car. Not something you can do in a couple minutes with a battery powered angle grinder.

Tesla has demonstrated that their batteries can be removed and replaced in a matter of a minute or two, given the right equipment.

https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event

Since the batteries cost an order of magnitude more than a catalytic converter, this could justify criminals developing more sophisticated equipment to pull it off.

This used to be more true, but with their new battery packs becoming an integral part of the frame, this is no longer going to be possible.

https://electrek.co/2021/01/19/tesla-structural-battery-pack...

Interesting, I’ve always thought it would make more sense to optimize for hot-swappable batteries rather than try to improve supercharger tech.

Four bricks and a jack I guess.

You know why I haven’t replaced the batteries on our 11 year old Nissan Leaf? Because I’m not quite ready to devote what will probably be multiple weekends to the job. So dispel any ideas you might have of someone snagging a battery pack in the middle of the night before I manage to release the hounds.

The battery packs will likely be serial number locked to the car as well as physically locked.

Internally they might just be standard cells. Might even be more profitable to sell them individually, just like shucking hard drives.

Somehow the big vendors get prices that consumers can only dream of.

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