Tesla Shows Off A 90-Second Battery Swap System

that is the point :)

The video is now up: http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap

Exactly.

So why did they make a direct comparison?

Well, this wouldn't be fair either. Audi allows you to fill 90 litters, it's the advantage of the old technology. Fair comparison shouldn't artificially cripple the competition.

For me, battery swap in 90 seconds is a powerful enough and honest marketing message, no need for a comparison.

While I agree that it's on the face of it slightly dishonest to fill the audi to twice the range of the tesla I can think of 2 counter points;

The audi doesn't always have a full tank when you leave in the morning, unlike the tesla. If Tesla ever make a drop in battery that has the audis range it's still a much faster stop.

Speed and range aside is also a much more pleasant experience to stay in the car.

An Audi A8 and some expensive S class models.

My truck (Tundra) takes 26.4 gallons according to the website (I always fill up before then).

My family has a Ford Excursion that has a standard 40 gallon tank (151 liters). It gets almost 800 miles (1200 km) to a tank.

A better comparison would be the 2014 Audi R8 4.2 Coupe (Tiptronic), which does 0-60 mph in 4.4 seconds [1], although that's still slower than the Model S which does 0-60 in 4.2 seconds [2]. Of course, the R8 costs significantly more than the Model S in spite of the inferior performance.

[1] http://www.zeroto60times.com/Audi-0-60-mph-Times.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S#Options

this seems like the only reasonable solution that would get people to use this. When people buy these cars they should get the option to sign up for this service that includes a yearly cost that covers the maintenance and replacement of batteries. This way they can just let people swap batteries without worrying about getting different batteries and it also alleviates the worries about having to eventually replace all the batteries in the car. If this way is not economically feasible than Tesla is dead already, this is the only option that will make sense to consumers and Tesla needs to make it happen.

It would cost money, but I'd bet less than gasoline.

The station could use a mix of solar power, wind, power grid and charge the batteries for probably much less $/kWh than gasoline in a car.

I'm assuming the tesla doesn't phone home here but battery swapping also allows tesla to keep a much closer eye on the packs and possibly even swap faulty batteries without owners knowing.

That might be worth it to save the PR of a burnt out tesla from a failed battery.

The way you would want it done is as long as you own the car you pay some annual fee for battery swaps but then you can swap whenever you want. You would have to sign up at the point of sale for the service and not be able to situationally opt out whenever you weren't driving long distances with a desire for swaps though, because the idea is that you subsidize the fact you never need to "replace" your battery now and Tesla needs to keep up battery stocks with some fraction of the cost each year.

You left out the other part, which I think is significant:

   ... though they can also choose to keep the battery and pony up the 
   difference between the price between of the old and new batteries.

It's hard to say how much of an issue that is going to be without knowing the typical prices. Also, it needs to be balanced against the fact that a typical supercharger recharge is free.

>A legitimate worry is that you'll end up with someone else's lemon battery.

I was under the impression that these battery packs had so much monitoring and control technology built in, that would be very unlikely. Most batteries become lemons because on of the cells dies a death, becoming a short, which in turn drags down the other cells.

Tesla have a battery technology which is ment to be very advanced at managing each cell to prevent them catching fire, I would imagine they have very accurate wear level information on them too.

Do you know what the best method is for producing jet fuel (aviation turbine fuel) in a carbon neutral way from electricity?

Built-in recycling incentives. Very nice!

There's so much fake/forced enthusiasm around many startups that after a while the it's pretty easy to spot. (Example: The person exclaiming "What the...?" at the beginning, when everyone knew what was going to be shown. C'mon.) The really sad thing is people trying to will things to be more exciting than they really are.

Oh it was happening underneath. I couldn't even tell that! I thought the guy behind the car was doing something.

Definitely some interesting little details to iron out. The alignment should be easy. Just have to park within some tolerance, and the unbolting platform can rotate to adjust.

I wonder about the unbolting. What if one of the (what seemed like) dozen screwdriver bits fails? Screw the rest back on and fail the procedure? Also can the re-bolting fail, e.g. by dropping the bolt? Would your car end up with fewer and fewer bolts over time? I guess the system should have a reservoir of bolts that it can reuse.

Also wonder how this would handle east coast winters, what with all the ice that gets caked on the undercarriage.

All in all I'm jealous of the engineers at Tesla who get to work on it :)

It's still exists (probably not for long). But recently after they failed publicly many critics claimed that battery swap model won't work, I guess that the guys in tesla disagree. Thus the compassion is required.