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Comment by jcdavis | Hacker News Reader

I'm still confused on the details of this. Surely you'll be required to come back on the way back and swap back into your original battery? (for warranty reasons). Seems like a complex & expensive logistical nightmare (vs the simplicity of superchargers)

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Maybe I'm crazy but if it is a physical battery swap then this brings memories of history class. Horses were swapped along the silk road to extend distance in shorter range of time. Same goes for horses as do batteries I guess. They get the job well on more available energy but take for ever to regain to keep going. 2c of thought

I really doubt horses were fungible. I don't know the actual details, but I would expect when you swapped horses, you got off a company horse and got on another company horse.

Drivers can either return the fresh battery pack upon their journey past the service station, or keep it. Tesla will bill later for the difference in value, and Musk says that the service will cost about the same as a tank of gas.

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/21/4450664/tesla-model-s-batt...

"Musk says that the service will cost about the same as a tank of gas."

So, if you use this regularly, the cost benefit of electric cars decreases. Probably not much of a problem, as most trips are short and doable 'on your own battery'. It is an incentive to get your own battery back, though, and also may keep the actual usage of the service down a bit, so that they don't need to store zillions of batteries everywhere.

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