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Comment by btucker | Hacker News Reader

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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