5 ms·

Keep in mind even the battery in a Model S is half a ton, and integrated into the frame of the car...

• saalweachter 3y ago
  I mean, technically you could swap out the entire cab every time it needed to be charged. The goal is to get the trailer to the destination, not the cab. There are several problems with that, you end up with a lot more idle equipment than just the battery pack, you've got to either be constantly switching drivers or drivers have to be constantly switching cabs, you need facilities to swap trailers and charge cabs, etc etc etc. But tractor trailers already have a convenient modularity built in, is all I'm saying.
  • kristjansson 2y ago
    Tesla-semi-as-pony-express would be interesting, but isn't really compatible with _selling_ the actual truck as a product; no one wants to swap _their_ truck with someone else's, except the guys with above-average wear on their truck. The same dynamic limits battery swaps.
• Rebelgecko 3y ago
  What about this? https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event Or maybe those weren't production cars?
  • somerandomqaguy 3y ago
    NIO is the only car maker I know of that does battery swapping. Tesla's AFAIK were only a tech demo.
  • vel0city 3y ago
    That event was over a decade ago. Those were not production cars, and production at Tesla has moved away from this model and into "structural packs" where the battery pack is major structural component of the frame. Also, that demo was pretty much there to get some tax subsidies or something. They built the system to comply with the minimum to qualify, and once they got the money they didn't do anything else with it. Those cars weren't really production at all.