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After swearing up and down that they would never do battery swaps, Tesla demonstrated a 90 second swap back in 2012. They held a few events in California to ge

After swearing up and down that they would never do battery swaps, Tesla demonstrated a 90 second swap back in 2012. They held a few events in California to get enough swaps to meet ZEV benchmarks and get nearly $300mil. When they were called out they removed any reference to the program and pretended like it never happened. https://web.archive.org/web/20140331102655/http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap https://web.archive.org/web/20140331102655/http://www.teslam... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Controversies

munk-a 6y ago
Battery swaps are incredibly costly for the company - those units generally cost more than 10k - sometimes as high as 20k. Given that they are the majority of the cost of the vehicle it's not a great business proposition for manufacturers to offer to replace a battery for anything less than the majority of the cost of a new vehicle which consumers simply won't go for.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  You get the uncharged battery back, though, which you can then charge and give to another person. It's like a propane cylinder swap.
  - tln 6y ago
    ...just 500 times more expensive. Propane capacity isn't going to go down as the tanks age; losing 10% when swapping in an older battery could really suck.