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"On a beautiful day in May 2015, I drove the 13 hours from my home in Portland, Oregon, to Harris Ranch, California, halfway between San Francisco and Los Angel
by irthomasthomas 4y ago
"On a beautiful day in May 2015, I drove the 13 hours from my home in Portland, Oregon, to Harris Ranch, California, halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. At the time, Tesla was touting a battery swap station that could send Tesla drivers on their way in a fully powered vehicle in less than the time it takes to fill up a car with gas. Overtaken by curiosity, I had decided to spend a long Memorial Day weekend in California’s Central Valley to see if Elon Musk’s latest bit of dream weaving could stand up to reality.
There, amid the pervasive stench of cow droppings from a nearby feedlot, I discovered that Tesla’s battery swap station was not in fact being made available to owners who regularly drove between California’s two largest cities. Instead, the company was running diesel generators to power additional Superchargers (the kind that take 30 to 60 minutes to recharge a battery) to handle the holiday rush, their exhaust mingling with the unmistakable smell of bullshit.
That one decision to go and find the truth underlying Elon Musk’s promises, rather than just take his word for it, changed my life in ways I never could have anticipated. Now, seven long and often lonely years later, the world seems to be understanding what I learned from the experience: Once you stop taking Musk at his word, his heroic popular image evaporates and a far darker reality begins to reveal itself"
I made the same discovery when I read the Tesla powerwall patents. A bunch of 18650 batteries and nothing more.
- nathias 4y agowhat else could it be, 18650s are the best of battery tech we have ...
- irthomasthomas 4y agoThe revolutionary battery tech which they so generously "open sourced" the patents for.
- Gud 4y ago18650 is just the cell though. What Tesla brought to the table was their battery babysitting tech. Let’s not pretend Tesla hasn’t given us some excellent engineering.
- irthomasthomas 4y agoCan you link me to those patents then, because I didn't see them at the time. all I read was that they tested 4 types of batteries, and picked the best one, then wired them up. You had to buy the other equipment seperately to plug them in to your home solar. There was nothing of value in the patents at the time they released the Powerwall.
- vardump 4y ago18650 is not a battery tech in itself, it's mainly just a form factor.
- patd 4y agoI honestly fail to see the issue. Running diesel generators to handle peak demand may not be the greenest move but it was likely the best move before they could come up with a better solution. Should they have left users stranded because they couldn't charge ? What did you expect from Tesla powerwall ? It's another use of the same battery tech they had in their cars allowing them to use the same supply to build two products. Most of the added value of the powerwall is in the software and the battery management, not in the form-factor of the batteries. I suppose most home batteries are just repackaging batteries used in other industries.
- number6 4y agoChange nothing until you create perfect conditions. No partial steps of experiments allowed. Remember the first car with its 500 mile autonomy, air-conditioned and with Bluetooth for mobile phones invented centuries later. The golden age!
- jsnell 4y agoAt that time, Tesla claimed to be running battery swap stations, and was receiving massive subsidies from California for it. The entire point of the story is that the battery swaps were not being used even in situations where they would make the most sense, and the alternative was expensive and based on fossile fuels. The implication is that Tesla was committing fraud, taking the subsidies and not in providing the promised service in exchange.
- _ea1k 4y agoBattery swap stations still have to charge the batteries being swapped. If diesel was needed for charging the cars, it would have been needed for those too. The battery swap station was offered to a small subset of owners. From what they claim, the reviews weren't overly positive. TBH, I prefer charging the battery while in the car over a system like that in general.