Battery Swap [video] | Hacker News Reader

Battery Swap [video]

teslamotors.com

289 pointschaz175 comments

To me, the most surprising part is: Holy fuck, Audi's have huge petrol tanks! I usually fill up my reasonably priced car in like a minute or so and it gets a range of some 700 kilometers on a ~40 liter gas tank.

5 minutes for a petrol stop? That's insane.

Likewise, I get 700 miles (~1100km) from a 10 imperial gallon (45l) tank.

With that said, it's not sensible to compare a modern european small car with the average US car. Particularly the class of car that the Model S is competing with (which are typically expensive, have a high capacity and relatively inefficient engine, and luxury interior).

If filling up your tank takes 2 minutes (1 minute filling + 1 minute overhead), you can tank 350 miles per minute. The Tesla S gets 265 miles in 1.5 minutes, which is 175 miles per minute. So your car can be refilled twice as fast as the Tesla S when measured in miles. Furthermore, you need to recharge the Tesla more often.

At least, Elon is honest about it and says "this is about convincing the people that are skeptics". (And not about making a fair comparison.)

Most US drivers are not getting 700 miles from a 12 US gallon tank (58 US MPG). The average fuel economy of US cars is 24.6 MPG.

An Audi A6, in the US at least, gets 33 highway MPG and has a 19.8 gallon fuel tank.

And yes, of course you charge the Tesla more often. You charge it every night when you come home, and it's ready with a full charge the next morning. That's just a totally different usage pattern from only filling up when it gets low like you do with a gasoline powered car.

I'd bet that most Tesla drivers will never have to stop to recharge, mostly because they will use their Tesla around town, and will take long trips in another car or fly, because Tesla owners are wealthy.

EDIT: converted imperial gallons to US

> I'd bet that most Tesla drivers will never have to stop to recharge, mostly because they will use their Tesla around town, and will take long trips in another car or fly, because Tesla owners are wealthy.

That's probably true, but much of the recent marketing around battery swaps and transcontinental charging networks is aimed specifically at road trips. I suppose one would argue that they're working on this infrastructure now for the future when much more affordable EVs are available.

Note that imperial gallons are substantially larger than the regular kind. A 10 imperial gallon tank holds 12 US gallons, and so 700 miles from a 10 imperial gallon tank is actually about 58MPG. Still very high, of course.

Nitpick: regular kind? That's quite… culture centric.

The only "regular" capacity unit that I know of comes from a deliberate attempt to normalize every units. Namely, the Litre from the metric system.

Smug Frenchman

It's not my fault that one of the units is just the name of the other unit with a modifier. It's not like "gallon" is shorthand for something longer and more formal.

Hint: when an Englishman walks into a pub, he doesn't order an 'imperial pint' of beer...

imperial gallon & US gallon?

Or maybe more interesting but historical "ale gallon" and "wine gallon".

You have to also factor in how many swapping stations they have in each "Tesla center". Typical gas station has at least 8 pumps larger about 16. Although, there is only a handful of Teslas, so possibility of a lineup is low.

Not just that, most people will most likely just charge at home and use battery swaps as an absolute last resort or when they're on a long road trip. I'm sure the cost associated with a battery swap is not "cheap" (i.e. diffing your battery capacity versus the battery capacity of the new battery and multiplying that by the total cost of the new battery. You weren't thinking you can just roll into any 'ol battery depot and swap out your 5 year old Model S battery with a brand spankin' new one, right ;)?)

Seemed normal to me. I think my wife's BMW SUV thingie fits like 90 liters.

At 10 gallons per minute, that's still just 2 minutes pumping time. (23 gallons)

Edit: I checked again, he pumps for 2.5 minutes and gets exactly 23 gallons. So I guess the pump isn't as fast as Elon says on stage. But it still surprised me because, well, that's about twice as long as what I'm used to :)

This is a ridiculous discussion.

It takes about 3-5 minutes to fill up a large-tank performance car, similar in features and trim to the Model S. It takes about 2-4 minutes to fill up a smaller car. It takes less than 2 minutes to "fill up" a Model S.

It takes about 10 minutes if you also use the restroom. Are we going to start factoring that into the comparison? If not, I'm out.

What's probably most relevant is that it would take roughly as long to half-fill the Audi as to replace the Tesla's battery. That's in many ways a fairer comparison, as the Model S has roughly half the driving range of an Audi, and (I think) most car gasoline fill-ups aren't from near-empty back to full.

The model he fills up looks to be an A8. The A8 fuel economy is around 15-18MPG. So 20 gallon tank only gets 350 mile range on it.

Aside from the top end A8s with upgraded engines, they get 18MPG city and 28MPG highway. Simply saying that the A8 gets 15-18MPG is deceptive. So, if we are talking range, an A8 will get upwards of 560 miles on a tank.

If you're comparing on performance alone, you better get the upgraded Audi to match the Model S...

Ok. That's a very guzzly car then, though; even other Audis like the A5 seem to do a lot better than that, especially on the highway.

Tesla's competition, from the perspective of performance and price, is very guzzly cars.

But big $100,000 cars like this mid-range S-class Merc http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehicles/model/class-S/model-S... seem to have 20+ gallon gas tanks (here's the S550's capacity http://autos.yahoo.com/mercedes-benz/s-class/2013/s550/speci... ) and the ability to manage about 25MPG on the highway. That would place them at 500+ miles from a single fill. (They'll do a lot worse with city driving though: the S550 should only give 350 miles. I think these MPG numbers are the EPA's.)

They have your serial number. I'm sure it's just billed directly to your card on file.

Well it does seem that most of the time saved when filling up the Model S comes from not having to get out of the car in the first place. And I guess the credit card gets used from within the car?

Did you watch the video? Not all of the time at the gas station is spent pumping.

Pumps vary dramatically in speed. My car has a 15.8 gallon tank, and it can easily take a couple of minutes to fill up (in Virginia).

Not to mention random pumps that you can never get to pump at full speed because they seem to fail to detect that the nozzle is in your tank's hole, or that click and stop every 3 seconds because the gas backs up because it doesn't flow down the tube fast enough.

As Musk points out, this is the fastest pump they could find in their area. Pumps vary tremendously in speed. Actually I'm curious about why the same pumps are sometimes fast, and sometimes very slow. Anybody know? Does tank level really matter that much?

I think it has to do with how much fuel is in the gas stations storage tanks. When the tanks get low they pump more slowly. I think it has to do with the pressure created by the weight of fuel pushing gas out of the bottom of the tank faster, there is more potential energy to push the gas faster in a full tank, mass x gravity x height equals potential energy.

Haha, well if Musk says so it must be true!

In the US, fuel pumps meant for regular sized cars (not trucks, boats, planes, etc) are limited to 10 gallons/minute. If that pump really was that fast, then it really was (among) the fastest legal pump(s) in the area.

http://www.epa.gov/otaq/regs/ld-hwy/evap/spitback.txt

Pssst, a BMW SUV is also a heavy luxury vehicle.

It also depends greatly on how many other people are using the other pumps at the station. A station where every pump is in use pumps considerably more slowly than one where you are the only one pumping.

Yes,I thought the same, I even looked up the specs for some of their models. I thought they were bullshiting me. And I think they did, that was not 10 gal per minute.

As an engineer I would have preferred to have seen a shot from under the car showing the actual process. It's unfortunate that they chose to record it from a hundred feet away.

As for the reality of this swap deal. Well, it sounds like a logistical pain in the ass. You are required to come back and get your original battery pack back or pay the difference in cost for the new one. Option number two could be in the thousands of dollars. That means your trip logistics now have to adjust to the location of that particular station or else.

Hypothetically, say you travel from LA to SFO and stay there for work for three months. Will they hold your original battery pack or will it be used to swap into other cars? Your battery could end-up in Nebraska. Then what? How many stations will have this tech and when?

Are they, perhaps, going to charge and store your pack and then somehow ship it to a station near you for reclaiming? If that's the case that would make for a very expensive power-up.

At the end of the day I fail to see how this might convince skeptics unless they suck at math and logical reasoning. Sadly this is very much like their creative financing scheme.

Cool tech but it would have been nice to have gotten far more detail on all points.

Don't get me wrong. I really like Tesla. I am waiting for the SUV and will more than likely buy two of them.

I think the business model needs to mimic that of the BetterPlace idea: Users of battery swapping stations pay a monthly fee, and the battery is seen more as a commodity which is rented by the user, but owned by the company.

Coming back to get a battery is absurd, and should never happen.

Exactly. I've had this debate/argument many times with HN'ers. For some reason, people around here are unnaturally attached to the idea of owning a particular car battery.

I've tried to see it from my interlocutors' point of view, but the point still isn't getting through to me, I'm afraid.

I agree. It strikes me as insane to swap out a ten-to-twenty thousand dollar piece of your car on any regular basis.

Can you elaborate on why you feel that way? Are you mostly concerned about being unable to gauge the remaining life of a "used" battery that's been in someone else's car, or do you see it as a pride-of-ownership sort of thing?

Right, if I get someone else's, and later we trade back, what happens if we each think there is a problem the other caused by (say) pushing it too hard?

If Tesla only loans you a Tesla battery and you have to swap back to yours that they don't give anywhere else, that could make it manageable.

There would never be an opportunity for he-said/she-said arguments to occur. The battery would have extensive data logging (like the rest of the Tesla itself) to keep very careful records of how each owner treated it.

Put another way, it would be like leasing the car itself. If you abuse a leased car severely enough, there's a good chance the dealer will find some evidence of it when you turn the car in. In return for not having to pay as much for the battery, and being able to swap it out at any time, you would have an economic incentive not to discharge it excessively or otherwise mistreat it.

Why not use the same model as the gas bottles of the BBQ? :)

You pay a fee to change the battery; The charging station then recharges it and swaps it to another tesla, and so on.

Here is a closer look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH-H3-F4Ztc

Looks like it's held on by 18-20 bolts.

> Well, it sounds like a logistical pain in the ass. You are required to come back and get your original battery pack back or pay the difference in cost for the new one.

I imagine they'll get rid of the "come back for your battery" functionality eventually. It's just kind of goofy and unnecessary.

Credit me if I get a slightly older/more worn battery than the one I was driving with, bill me if I get a slightly newer battery, and use this system as a way to pretty much eliminate the whole panic surrounding electric cars and what happens when the battery gets old and decrepit.

If the system demands a shorter lifecycle for batteries before they're reconditioned (as you'd really want to avoid DRASTIC differences in cost and performance between batteries of the same class when people pull into a station) it might add some cost to the overall system. I don't believe it will represent a profound increase in cost.

Well if we assume you only do battery swaps then the cost of your "old" battery would be almost the cost of a new battery so that case you would be paying only small amount for each battery swap.

The reason they do this would be because otherwise someone with a 3 year old battery that needs replacement would be able to get a new battery effectively for free.

If you swapped batteries for a recurring subscription fee, it would help to offset the cost of batteries wearing out.

Battery replacement is a huge problem with electric and hybrid vehicles right now. The cost of replacing the battery is similar to the cost of replacing a combustion engine, yet the battery will wear out considerably sooner. A good system like this could remove that factor entirely.

A company called BetterPlace[0] has/had plans to do this.

[0] http://www.betterplace.com/How-it-Works/battery-switch-stati...

I would have loved to see the details too. It takes a mechanic longer than 90 seconds to change a tire, so it's pretty impressive if they can really change a very heavy battery pack in that much time.

I suppose it's probably using tech similar to what's on a factory floor. If you need to fasten/unfasten twelve bolts, and you want to do it very fast, you just use twelve separate air ratchets on a tooling. If you need to move a thousand pounds of battery, you use an arm that is designed to do just that, and only that.

Elon explains that it was using the same machine as in the manufacturing factory.

I saw it and wondered "what about dirt"? Dust, gravel, spilled oil, the stray coke can. Rain (yes it does sometimes rain in California). This is a fine stage demo, but really? We're talking enormous sealed electric bombs, swapped out by automated wrench and jack platforms, then a subterranean battery-storage-and-recharge system. The bigger technology than 'doing it at all' is 'keeping it working under environmental conditions'. Any info about that?

FWIW, GM conducts full submersion tests on their batteries. I would hope Tesla does the same.

These things are in the floor of a car. I would imagine cars deal with much worse environmental conditions than a dedicated battery swapping station.

Please, you think they haven't thought of those problems? I'm sure it's a sealed system designed for real-world use. Otherwise why would they even create it?

You could say the same about the car itself, but that appears to work just fine in the elements.

Generally, doing open-heart surgery on a car requires a clean environment, a careful mechanic, and lots of attention to detail. A subterranean automated wrench platform is a whole 'nother thing.

There are many words I'd use to describe an auto-shop. Clean is not among them.

A good shop is clean. Not hospital room clean, not eat-off-the-floor clean, but clean. Floors swept and rinsed, fluids captured in drain pains, etc.

This changing station could well be inside such a tidy and enclosed area at the Tesla Station.

Its supposed to be drive-thru. If its not, then add opening the garage door (one coming, one going) and waiting in line to the supposed 90-second swap time.

These are literally all engineering problems that can and have been solved. You have no idea what you're talking about as it applies to this situation.

I am an engineer, and I am a driver. What else do I need to be?

An engineer at Tesla, who has actually worked on the problem, rather than someone who believes he has enough information to make a judgement on a problem which you have not studied or thought about for more than a few minutes. /internetproblems

I'm out, this argument is pointless.

As with most high tech, these problems were worked out by military applications at taxpayer expense. Better Place (the Israeli predecessor to this) based their swap stations on the tech used to load bombs onto jets. No doubt Tesla is standing on those shoulders.

It's probably reasons like those -- and other challenges, like actual installation -- that are keeping them back from announcing these stations as being available rather than just planned for an unknown point in the future, which is all we learned today.

I don't doubt they have all of those issues covered, but was looking at some of the damage reports from Hurricane Sandy on the subway in Manhattan and thought "hmm if a surge of saltwater submerged one of these things you would only have a limited time to get it un-submerged before the saltwater got into the packs. When that happened you'd be in a world of hurt.

There was some drama about a bunch of Fisker EVs catching fire[1] after immersion, but apparently[2] not (directly) battery-related.

Offhand, I'm not sure if the specific battery chemistry requires vents for in/out-gassing, or whether you could reasonably fully seal them. Or I suppose you could[3] have the battery pack detect such a condition and use its power to electrolyse some water to keep the pack at positive pressure. Or maybe some kind of self-destruct that dumps the stored energy into a chemical reaction or passivates the cells somehow (wave hands)

[1] http://jalopnik.com/5956179/more-than-a-dozen-fisker-karma-h...

[2] http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1080277_fisker-determines...

[3] points will be awarded for the number of different ways this is a bad idea

I think the greatest thing to take out of the presentation is...

1. The Tesla driver does NOT need to get out of the car (screw rain and bugs).

2. It IS a reasonable time (no need to sit in a diner and wait)

3. The mileage limitation is becoming less limiting (no different than making sure a long trip has a gas station on the way).

Still need to get out to clean the windshield.

Whats the big deal with getting out anyway?

I only brought that up since here where I'm at in NorCal, there were tons of bugs when I filed my tank recently.

Also if you have kids in the car, it's convenient, it's like asking why are there drive thru's at restaurants, car washes, and atm machines.

Not sure that #1 applies to everyone...I remember on a road trip, in Oregon it's against the law for me to fill my OWN tank.

EDIT: Added wife's 2 cents

I actively avoid running low on fuel in New Jersey (compulsory full-service stations). I don't mind getting out of my car to get gas; the station attendant is doing nothing of value for me. I'm neither done faster not is the fuel in some way better than if I filled the car myself.

In contrast, I do see the value in having a battery exchange (it's something they can do better for me than I could do myself). In that case, not getting out of the car is still essentialy a non-factor for me, but it does end up being a tiny perk.

Living in NYC, I actively aim to run low on fuel in New Jersey so I can save $.50 a gallon.

We are both rational people, I see. (I was usually driving from Baltimore to NYC or destinations further north.)

You can take a kid full of cars to a highway stop and get back on the road in under 30 minutes?

I have a hard time doing that with a car full of adults. (Though, to be fair, the cases I'm thinking of involved musicians.)

It's not so much the getting out, as the not having to do anything - you get 90 seconds of HN time!

The swap will cost between $60 & $80[1].

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-tesla-swap-idUS...

The cost is fine, about what it costs to fill a gas tank, give or take. But what about this:

"Drivers who choose to swap must reclaim their original battery on their return trip or pay the difference in cost for the new pack."

That seems... inconvenient.

Oooh... that's not good.

I envisioned it as an insurance-like system: you pay for battery swaps, which cost X amount, which goes toward the collective maintenance of all the batteries in the whole system. Thus you don't have to worry about which battery is yours, or the health of your battery, or anything about the battery anymore. That simplicity alone makes it worth the price of admission.

If they're worried about specific batteries and specific costs and specific maintenance tied to you, then I think they system has too many complex details to make it an easy snap decision. UX won't be as good, not as smooth, and it'll deter people from using the service... I think they need to go the collective route to make this work.

That's how I saw it as well. The reality is certainly more disappointing. This would have been a great opportunity to simply take away what I think is the Tesla's most limiting factor: battery degradation.

I imagine they must start out doing it like this until they test usage, etc.. Who knows how people could take advantage of it otherwise. It would prevent a possible initial problem of a ton of battery packs just building up in one location. They'd want the first users to to be regular users, and by keeping it to those who it works for, the service will be available faster + once again they won't need to build capacity to store a huge excess amount of of battery packs on location.

how can batteries build up in one location?

Assuming you're not getting someone elses' old battery pack - especially since the person is supposed to pick it up upon return.

Wait ... this is hurting my brain.

That answers the one question I had watching that video: does this mean we just freely circulate battery packs with varying amounts of usage?

Ideally the system would be extremely smart: not just freely circulating anything, but tracking the health of each and every battery, doing automated maintenance as much as possible, and circulating certain batteries out for refurb if they get too low.

It should be like battery insurance: you'd just never have to worry about it, and there would be an extremely smart system ensuring the health of every Tesla battery on the road. "Should" being the key word here... but maybe that's the plan, hard to say.

Paying the difference between the two packs seems like it is that insurance, you just have to pay for it. Of course, we don't know what that difference is going to be so, so it's hard to say if it's a fair price at all...

If you really have to reclaim YOUR battery when you come back, that means the swap place has to keep that battery in storage and ready to go (fully charged) for the next time you come back? And they can't re-rent it out.

Ow. You should be leasing the battery pack from Tesla, and then you swap one pack you are leasing from Tesla with another pack you are leasing from Tesla, so there is no need to worry about what happens when you swap a $8000 battery with a $10,000 battery.

(Are the Model S batteries even that cheap?)

Some cursory googling says the cost is probably closer to $30,000. Current purchases can buy a $12,000 future option for a battery replacement in 8 years, so it seems like Tesla's predictions are that even with improvements for 8 years from now, a Tesla S battery will cost $12K+interest.

I feel that may be high, when you factor how far are charging/swapping stations, and if the driver will run the battery to the full range.

BUT (grammar aside), I think the high margin may be the push for a franchise model for investors for charging/swapping stations. Especially when you consider BMW, and Toyota are both consulting with Tesla, and Elon may be aiming for a more affordable ($40k I vaguely remember hearing) vehicle to add to their lineup.

I imagine this is to help cover the cost of implementing the systems. Still cheaper than gas -- would be silly of them to offer it free -- no need to yet, until / if they need or want to increase demand of Tesla vehicles; However they need to ramp up supply first.

On a side note, did you see all the people in the audience taking pictures/videos? This really bugs me nowadays. I used to be like that but then I realize a.) I'll probably never watch this and b.) they are more than likely already capturing this moment and it is guaranteed to be better than my crappy handheld phone video. Same goes for concerts and other events.

Better Place has been trying to do the same in Israel and Denmark, and is looking to expand into the US eventually:

http://www.wbur.org/npr/159355676/dont-charge-that-electric-...

Better Place actually filed for bankruptcy about a month ago: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/anothe...

Oops, somehow I missed that. Thanks.

Better Place, which offered batter swapping for electric cars, announced bankruptcy about a month ago. I wonder if there's any connection? Assuaging fears that battery swapping will no longer be available? Tesla can now use technology that had been patented by Better Place?

It appears like they were communicating together 4 years ago to allow for swap-style batteries:

http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/news_detail.cfm/news_id=12...

Instead of the requirement for the owners to return & pick up their battery, why not charge $750 yearly for the privilege of swap and forget? If you swap, it's the luck of the draw whether you get a brand-new battery or a used one. But Tesla could use that money to cycle in new batteries to the pool, so your chances of getting a brand-new battery remain decent.

There is no requirement to return the swapped battery. If you want to keep the new one you can. It works exactly the way you describe.

Can't wait to see Tesla grow and change the way we think about automobiles, at a species level.

Elon thinks most cars in production will be all-electric by 2030. I think that's achievable.

I really hope that by 2030, we are utilizing Graphite Super capacitors....with everything I remember reading, it sounds like a miracle material.

I think wireless charging built into parking spots or even long stretches of highways (charging while driving) would be a lot cooler.

Does sound great, and reminds me alot about the predictions in Popular Mechanics.

Unfortunately, the greatest hindrance when it comes to great innovation and progress (that even Tesla is facing in other states) is politics.

However, I'm long on Tesla and I don't doubt Elon Musk for a second. He has electrical engineers (Tesla), computer technicians (Paypal...evident in Tesla's software), ..... and something that I can't believe is in his network.... rocket scientist (Space X...remember the saying "it's not rocket science," implies difficulty). To be as successful as he is, I'm sure he has political backing, it's just unfortunate that in politics, the basis is big bank takes little bank.

Well, now i certainly think its achievable.

The amazing part is that people without a Tesla think that the battery swap stuff is anymore than just window dressing. You charge the car at night and it is full every morning. The times you would use this are vanishingly few. Even on those occasions, unless I am in a huge, huge hurry, I would still take the supercharger over this option.

Between cars sexier than swimsuit models, and owning all the infrastructure to support them Tesla has a real potential to be a giant company. I don't usually buy individual stocks, but Tesla keeps looking more lucrative in the long term. If he can survive in the short term, there's a great future.

I have little doubt. I live in Virginia, one of the states whose government (or whose county governments) has been conspiring with a cartel of car dealers to try to forbid Tesla from selling their cars. Something happened, because I was in a mall yesterday and suddenly found myself next to a Tesla store. Those cars are stunning in person, inside and out. It was low key, like an Apple store. I don't usually get excited about cars and things, but if I had had $86,000 in my pocket I would have bought one. There was an emotional attraction that was very surprising. It felt like I was looking at a better future.

This article [0] explains it: what I saw was a showroom; actual purchase must be completed over the internet.

[0] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732404950457854...

I would like to know is there a capacity for the number of battery replacements they system can do ? I guess they recharge your battery and pass it on to the next person when it's fully charged. How do they insure battery quality for the replacements. Still a F'ing awesome demo.

This is the key reason you'd want to do this in the first place. It not only solves the problem of quickly charging the battery, it solves the problem of battery quality over time!

The mere fact that you have batteries being swapped in and out of cars means you can systematically track battery health and refurbish batteries that are getting low, without ever having to bother the customer or affect the driveability of the car.

The $40 (or so) battery swap fee is not for the electricity or the infrastructure, it is an insurance payment on the battery itself. You're paying for the collective maintenance of all Tesla batteries, and in turn ensuring the health and ease of your own.

The last remaining argument against electric has always been the charge time, and "oh, but the battery costs $15,000 when it finally dies out"—I always knew a system of battery swap was the answer to basically everything, and I thought Tesla was doing it wrong by coming out with a fixed-battery car.

Turns out I was wrong. They're doing everything exactly right.

According to this article (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-tesla-swap-idUS...):

    A battery pack swap will cost between $60 and $80,
    about the same as filling up a 15-gallon gas tank,
    Musk said. Drivers who choose to swap must reclaim
    their original battery on their return trip or pay
    the difference in cost for the new pack.

So, I think they're not quite tackling the battery quality problem like you're suggesting. I think your idea makes a lot more sense than coming back to reclaim your battery later, though. I find that very odd.

My guess is the cost structure of such an infrastructure is at first prohibitive to offer a complete swap at 60-80$. Once the market is big enough they might be able to switch to the model suggested abovr.

Agreed, it makes sense at small scale to make it an individual system. Once the system grows, it'll be easier to spread the cost over more users. It's like insurance.

I hope that's where they're going, because it's the crux of the concept to me.

Maybe once more people are doing it they'll switch to that system? Initially when few are doing it in a few places, there's incentive to just get a better battery and keep it.

It potentially also enables the used car market. I definitely would be hesitant of buying a used tesla if i knew there was a potential 15k bill waiting for me very shortly.

Agreed. I never could have bought an electric knowing how batteries die. This eliminates that problem. Now if only my MacBook had battery swap capability...

So, $40 times 375 == $15000. That, what, 37500 miles? Sounds worse, not better.

You're going on long trips every single mile?

Otherwise you're charging it at home, at work, or using a supercharger while you eat lunch.

You may only swap the batt 10 times or less in those 37,500 miles. And you still get all the battery-quality advantages.

You've figured it wrong. After 37500 miles of long-distance driving, you have paid as much as a battery pack. Do you do less than that many long-distance miles in a normal car lifetime?

Your calculations rely on someone paying to swap out their battery every time they run low on electricity. The other person is saying that in typical use, you will end up charging the vehicle most of the time, not swapping the battery.

If you were to swap the battery every time, this would look to be a poor bargain. But if the battery is swapped only once per ten "empties", because for the other 9 it was convenient to charge it, then the calculation would be redone for 10x the distance at the same price.

So, you are both right, but talking about slightly different things (typical use for a commuter with occasional trips, vs long-distance-only users).

The point is that before this, charging (even with a supercharger in ~1 hour) was the accepted method of filling the battery, and it was free and/or cheap. That is still a perfectly acceptable method.

Now you also have the choice of swapping, which provides you with a guarantee of a constantly healthy battery, a fast full charge, and continuous long-distance capability.

I see your point—if you're doing 37,500 miles of long-distance, you're going to eventually pay for the battery cost over time. Possibly. But you have the choice, and it's going to be amortized over so many snap decisions that it's more like, "the convenience of this is worth $40 to me right now," rather than thinking of it as the cost of a new battery.

I think it works out, personally. And for most people, charging is a perfectly acceptable way to drive the car. I think people won't really swap the battery that often, and when they do it'll be because they need the time benefit, and that's the value proposition.

For others, they get the same battery-life and battery-health benefits by swapping only once in a while, or hell, even only when their current battery dies completely. Basically, everyone wins, and it's still about the same cost as gas for a 22mpg car, even if you swap 50% of the time. If you swap less than that, it's cheaper to operate in the same period of time. Simple as that.

Its not at all hard to drive 100 miles in a single trip every week. Visit your brother at the lake. Drive the spouse to a few events on the weekend. Even cruise the shoreline.

So that makes about 7 years (pessimistic) to pay as much as for a new battery pack.

Why would you swap your battery in a 100 mile trip when the model s has much more range than 100 miles on a single charge.

Your new fully charged battery pack, yes. But they degrade. What are you getting from the station? Can you even tell? Pay $40 and end up with a half-capacity battery maybe.

So, use a bigger number than 100, it helps some, but not tremendously.

The max Model S range is 265 miles. That's tremendously larger than 100.

This doesn't break self-charging. You could use the same battery pack for a couple of months and then do the battery swap when you're doing a long distance drive.

Where did you get the 37,500 mile number from? That's saying you get 100 mile range when the advertised range is 265 miles. Even being conservative and saying 200 miles puts you at 75k miles after your 375 swaps.

Does anyone else want to see a closer look of the battery getting swapped out? I don't think it was necessary to see a dude filling up his car with gas.

Im assuming this will work on all the Model S's that have already been produced? Was that mentioned?

"Battery pack swap works with all Tesla Model S cars, past and present. It was always there."

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/347082201596321794

Everything seems to indicate that this is in reference to all Model S's.

Nice demo. Can someone more knowledgeable compare the range of that Audi with two Teslas there combined at full juice?

Not entirely sure which Audi that is. Lets assume: http://www.autoweek.nl/auto/58469/audi-a8-l-30-tfsi-quattro 90 liters at 9.3 km/liter = 837 km. Compared to Tesla's claimed 426 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S)

I wonder if anyone has considered buying a Tesla (free recharges for life), driving home every day and finding a way to discharge the battery back into the grid through their meter to negate their home electricity bill.

This idea might be up there with saving on your electric bill by installing little turbines on all your water faucets.

For awhile you could buy a natural gas burning Stirling engine that would provide electricity while heating your water with the waste heat.

The idea here is that you "bring free energy home" from Tesla's solar-panel-powered stations (leaving you car battery empty), not that you get to use it twice.

utilities have looked into this "smart grid" application for a while.

The bigger issue, I think, is what's the likelihood that your house/grid will drain your car battery before it can be recharged enough for you to be able to drive somewhere?

And you just _know_ someone is going to complain about "my car battery was drained without my permission! privacy rights! privacy rights!"

That's why the free superchargers are not located along your commute.

I never actually realized how much time it took to fill up a tank of gas! The next step is to get this working via a Knight Rider style truck so you never even have to stop moving.

Well you wouldn't need to pull into the truck to recharge, just dock with some electrodes on the back. Other cars could daisy-chain off of you.

Or even without a truck, if you weren't going as far, you could sell some of your energy to other cars behind you.

WCPGW?

What I especially liked about this demo is how it antiquated, dated, obsolete and generally uncool the current refuelling process appears in comparison.

US Cellular has a program where you can bring your phone to any retail store and swap out your battery for a charged one. No need to return to pick up your original. Granted, that's for a $10 battery, but why wouldn't this work for Tesla? Charging an extra fee is fine too - it's the price for convenience, vs waiting for a full charge of your own battery pack.

Because its a $10 battery and people don't often take advantage of the deal, US Cellular is able to easily eat the degradation cost. But on a $40k battery pack, where swapping happens potentially far more often, that cost is too significant to ignore. Hence they're charging a reasonable amount for it.

That $10 battery costs US Cellular $2. A cheap price for some positive P/R and customer retention.

In terms of energy delivery:

  ( 85 KWhr / 90 sec) * ( 3600 sec / hr ) = 3400 KW = 3.4 MW

3.4 megawatts, not bad.

Cool demo of the technology. Cool technology. But many if not most of electric car owners will never use it. They only travel to a from work, around town, into the city. Road trips are few and far in between. It is nice to know you CAN, not that you will.

"...nice to know you can" is exactly the point. You're right about day to day use; what this does is calm the range anxiety.

From this, we might infer that the upcoming lower priced models either use the same battery pack or will not have the option to swap packs. Or, maybe the system is designed to accomodate packs of different lengths. The 1st and 3rd seem the most likely.

"Faster or Free". Nice!

Considering human nature first, and the assumption that these battery swap sites will probably be unattended, I wonder how long before someone will work out how to steal those batteries?

First why would you make the battery sites unattended anymore than the average petrol (gas) station is unattended? (particularly in the near term where these are essentially prototypes).

Secondly here in the UK we have fully automated petrol stations and they have a low theft rate, high quality CCTV plus the need to put in a credit/debit card before it'll start pumping makes sure of that.

There are other issues with this technology but theft I can't see becoming a major one.

Actually, to my surprise, it appears that batteries must be worth stealing.

I was disappointed recently when cycling east out of Edinburgh to see that pretty much all of the solar powered lights along the path between Newcraighall and the Queen Margaret University campus have been systematically robbed. Initially I thought it was vandalism but after looking at a few it was clear that each one had been broken into for the batteries - nothing else was damaged. There must be 50+ lights - pretty much all robbed.

The battery packs looked fairly large and as this is a cycle/foot path they presumably had to use some kind of transport (hand trolley?).

:-(

Put on high vis jacket, people would assume you were servicing them rather than being naughty.

I don't know much about the lighting on this path, but I wouldn't have thought they were using expensive batteries? Then again people die stealing copper worth a few hundred quid.

Used to work at Patagonia, who installed a large-scale solar array in their parking lot in Southern California. Over a few years, at least 4 panels were stolen (of about 150 I believe).

These things are all valuable, just have to account for that and protect accordingly. I'm sure everything is entirely automated and secure, and I'm sure there are going to start being attendants watching over everything.

There are people who steal manhole covers for the scrap metal. (Yes, submitting others to hazard). It's not necessarily much profitable.

I'm sure you have nothing to worry about. The batteries will most likely be securely stored underground, not be visible to everyone. I'm sure they'll have at least 1 person at the station or at least security cameras.

It's not like you can just steal these batteries and sell them on the black market. Considering how much they weigh, it's probably near impossible to replace/install a new battery yourself.

I'm not worried about it at all - just that, from what I have seen, there must be some black market for industrial sized batteries (maybe for their metal component?). Whether this impacts on Tesla or not I have no idea - I suspect not.

It just becomes part of the cost of doing business. We still have credit cards, even though credit card fraud exists, it's just factored into interest rates.

If 1% of batteries get stolen (which is probably way higher than it'll actually be), then the price of batteries will increase by 1% to factor it in.

If that causes battery swaps to be uneconomical, so be it, the we'll figure out something else.

These batteries weigh a ton (probably literally), and it looks like all the mechanics are underground. It seems trivial to put a tamper alarm on it and due to the weight there would be a lot of time for security to arrive.

This could be just as secure as an ATM.

So you think a company that designs electric vehicles can't secure the batteries? The damn things come from underground. Not to mention the service station connects to the car somehow before doing so, because well as Tesla said, the battery is tied to your account.

I wonder how long before people start thinking before posting their opinions on the internet...

Can't we all just use some common sense before we start jumping to conclusions?

Banks and post offices get robbed every day. That problem is still not solved.

Apart from the extraordinarily rare successful heist[1], banks get robbed of teeny tiny amounts. That problem is effectively solved.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/981...

Insurance solved the problem of bank heists.

About as easy as stealing gas from a gas station. Slightly higher payoff, but still I don't see that as a huge problem, especially as the batteries probably all have serial numbers.

given their size there is more than enough room to put any amount of tracking gear you want into these packs. In fact I would be surprised if they haven't done that.

Why shouldn't the pack phone home? Why wait for drop off or exchange to report how it operates? If anything a black box system in one of these packs could provide a wealth of immediate information about operating characteristics that would benefit Tesla and battery manufacturers. It could all be done fully protecting the drivers privacy.

How would they power the tracking equipm... oh wait.

Theft should never hinder innovation, and when you factor in the ambition of Tesla, I am very sure they will dedicate as much time and effort into theft deterrence as they do to ease of use.

I'd be surprised if it ever happens. I'm sure the batteries are configured to be useless in the wrong car.

Why assume the thief will want to use it? The scrap value of the copper and aluminium alone could make it worthwhile

If batteries are that easy to remove, how long does it take someone to steal a battery in a parking lot?

You're going to crawl under a car with power tools, unhook the battery, and potentially smash yourself/head/hand with an extremely large pack of batteries, then try and drag it out of under the car?

I feel like it'd be easier just to siphon someone's gas...

People regularly steal catalytic converters with a sawzall; common targets are Toyota trucks/SUVs.

With batteries for a Tesla, I bet there are more than a few people with screwdrivers and three portable car jacks that would be very happy to make >$5k/night. If the Tesla design becomes a commodity, theft may become a problem.

That was very long winded given that it was promoting speed.

Would an A8 Audi owner pay more to fill up faster? Nope. Because it doesn't actually take very long.

The point is, an electrical charge can take 30 minutes or so, not that a petrol stop takes too long.

Man, Tesla are just incredible. Some day I'll be able to afford a Model S and do my part in getting us less dependent on oil.

Does anybody know if you can swap a 60kw battery for the 85kw?

Good music at the end of the video.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com