3 ms·

"the range of activities you can engage in is effectively limited to the roundtrip range of the vehicle since there is such a high refueling time" Whatever hap

"the range of activities you can engage in is effectively limited to the roundtrip range of the vehicle since there is such a high refueling time" Whatever happened to the plan to have facilities where you can drop off your discharged batteries and immediately replace them with charged ones?

m463 6y ago
I think it was technically possible, and proven, but turns out nobody really wanted it. It would also have been expensive and a logistical nightmare. What if you had a brand-new car. Would you want to take a trip and end up with a 3-year old battery? What if you had a 5-year old car. Would tesla want to give you a new battery? how would the cost difference be resolved? I think people didn't want to swap their pristine batteries for old ones. And people with old batteries didn't want to pay for new ones. and the swap cost would be pretty large.
- msrenee 6y ago
  I'm not a sparky because high voltage is terrifying to me. These batteries are not something your gas station employee is supposed to handle. Please correct me if I'm misinformed, but my understanding is that you'd have to have someone qualified to deal with these voltages to change out the batteries and that would be cost-prohibitive.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    I don't see why that should be an issue. I'm not an electrician and regularly plug and unplug 415v three phase devices. The process as demonstrated by Tesla was automated too.
  - m463 6y ago
    It was done by driving the car over a bay that would remove and replace the battery from below automatically. this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  Why should I care how old the battery is? I'm paying to lease its capacity, whatever the charge management system says it is. I don't maintain permanent personal relationships with my other batteries, so why should I cultivate an attachment to my car battery? I'll never, ever understand this particular argument against swappable EV batteries.
- thedrbrian 6y ago
  And you’ve got to design it in from the get go and use compatible packs in all vehicles. Unless you’re just going to swap between the same model , which will limit how many batteries are available at any one time. Do Tesla even just the same packs across S/X and 3/Y?
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    And you've got to engineer for its safety. Most batteries are in highly firewalled (in the physical sense of walls made to keep fire from spreading in the battery), structurally intense places in an EV (often in current "skateboard" designs the battery helps make up the literal foundations of the car). Making them removable adds safety tradeoffs (weaker firewalls so that they can be opened/closed for battery removal operations; among other structural trade-offs).
  - m463 6y ago
    I don't know about 3/y (or the new structural battery packs coming soon), but I thought the S/X were designed for it.

m463 6y ago

I think it was technically possible, and proven, but turns out nobody really wanted it. It would also have been expensive and a logistical nightmare. What if you had a brand-new car. Would you want to take a trip and end up with a 3-year old battery? What if you had a 5-year old car. Would tesla want to give you a new battery? how would the cost difference be resolved? I think people didn't want to swap their pristine batteries for old ones. And people with old batteries didn't want to pay for new ones. and the swap cost would be pretty large.

msrenee 6y ago
I'm not a sparky because high voltage is terrifying to me. These batteries are not something your gas station employee is supposed to handle. Please correct me if I'm misinformed, but my understanding is that you'd have to have someone qualified to deal with these voltages to change out the batteries and that would be cost-prohibitive.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  I don't see why that should be an issue. I'm not an electrician and regularly plug and unplug 415v three phase devices. The process as demonstrated by Tesla was automated too.
- m463 6y ago
  It was done by driving the car over a bay that would remove and replace the battery from below automatically. this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY
CamperBob2 6y ago
Why should I care how old the battery is? I'm paying to lease its capacity, whatever the charge management system says it is. I don't maintain permanent personal relationships with my other batteries, so why should I cultivate an attachment to my car battery? I'll never, ever understand this particular argument against swappable EV batteries.
thedrbrian 6y ago
And you’ve got to design it in from the get go and use compatible packs in all vehicles. Unless you’re just going to swap between the same model , which will limit how many batteries are available at any one time. Do Tesla even just the same packs across S/X and 3/Y?
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  And you've got to engineer for its safety. Most batteries are in highly firewalled (in the physical sense of walls made to keep fire from spreading in the battery), structurally intense places in an EV (often in current "skateboard" designs the battery helps make up the literal foundations of the car). Making them removable adds safety tradeoffs (weaker firewalls so that they can be opened/closed for battery removal operations; among other structural trade-offs).
- m463 6y ago
  I don't know about 3/y (or the new structural battery packs coming soon), but I thought the S/X were designed for it.