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I don't think battery swapping is a great idea. The problem is that the battery is such a huge part of the car's cost. I can only guess, but I would estimate $1

I don't think battery swapping is a great idea. The problem is that the battery is such a huge part of the car's cost. I can only guess, but I would estimate $15,000-20,000. Getting someone else's poorly treated battery could drastically effect the resale value of the car. The other company in the article tried to mitigate this problem by actually owning the batteries, but that isn't Tesla's model.

waster 13y ago
If I understand the idea correctly, you'd be swapping out your (depleted from a road trip) battery for someone else's (or Tesla's, if they shifted to a model where they provide some of the batteries at the swap-out stations), and then next time you wanted to swap again, you'd get another one. Doesn't seem to me to be a factor for resale. Seems like they're pitching it instead as a way to increase the range of a car while on the road, though I'm willing to say I've misunderstood based on my (twice) read of the article. If they are planning to release further detail Thursday, though, that'll presumably clarify.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - lifeformed 13y ago
    Well, presumably the swapping company would make sure the batteries are well maintained. If someone swaps out a damaged battery, the process should detect that and charge them extra, and not put the bad battery in the queue for swapping.
    - skaevola 13y ago
      That opens up a whole can of worms. How do you quantify the damage? If my battery is degraded 10% do I pay $15,000 * .1 = $1,500 just to get back on the highway? Like I said, this is easy if the customers don't own the batteries, but right now they do, and those batteries are very expensive. I think perfecting the whole supercharging system makes more sense.
      - waster 13y ago
        If I were Tesla, I'd do both.
        incompatible 13y ago
        Which would be nice for owners. Recharge your battery until it shows signs of age. Then swap it out repeatedly until you get a newish one, then go back to recharging only.
        schiffern 13y ago
        Self-service battery warranty. It's a win-win.
        akiselev 13y ago
        Combine it with a better recycling process: lithium based batteries are insanely energy intensive to produce to begin with so they are a great candidate. Then, chose the most efficient point in the life cycle to recycle the battery to recover the most cost. Since you're extremely unlikely to use a swap station for the first time after having used the car a long time, the risk to Tesla can be minimized. Factor in the price of recycling with a cynical view of the average user and everyone gets a price decrease on the batteries without the sticker shock of seeing the battery cost all at once. Really you'd sell your Tesla's with an already recycled battery and a couple of years of swapping thrown in. You can price it just like you price car insurance, based on amount of miles driven a year. Anything that puts more control of the most unproven tech into the hands of Tesla, the faster their batteries will improve. But maybe this is all just too expensive to implement without millions of cars on the road.
    - monting 13y ago
      Agreed. Though I imagine it'd be a subscription model, where if you're in the program, you won't have to worry about battery capacity/depreciation at all. The capacity of batteries in rotation would be maintained at a certain level, and the old batteries recycled or used as storage for the superchargers. I think it could potentially cost less than the monthly cost of gasoline for most people.
      - schiffern 13y ago
        >used as storage for the superchargers Superchargers don't use batteries. SolarCity does, though. http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx
        monting 13y ago
        Oh but they do/will. Musk said that the ones with solar panels can go completely off the grid and continue to work in a zombie apocalypse. The only way that is accomplished is through energy storage. http://www.cnbc.com/id/100777849 http://www.cnbc.com/id/100777849
- sp332 13y ago
  If they take my (say) brand-new Southern California battery and replace it with someone's two-year-old Salt Belt battery, that's going to decrease the value of my car.
  - schiffern 13y ago
    >that's going to decrease the value of my car. Forgive my ignorance, but how? Cheap battery swapping would mean that all batteries are essentially fungible. What stops the new owner from just swapping batteries again? What stops you? You're also forgetting that Tesla has a very generous battery warranty. Unless you don't think they'll honor it. http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/26/autos/tesla-service-gaurantee/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/26/autos/tesla-service-gaurante...
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Cheap battery swapping would mean that all batteries are essentially fungible Which will be interesting. I wonder if at that point the "tragedy of the commons" would start to set in. "Oh, it's ok if I run this battery totally flat all the time, it will shorten the battery's lifespan a lot, but I can just swap it for another!"
      - whatshisface 13y ago
        You could use the battery controller to implement restrictions. (E.g. allow it to be run flat only once per owner per month) or perhaps simply log the stresses they put on the unit and charge accordingly.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - schiffern 13y ago
        Why would you leave your car intentionally empty? Why inconvenience yourself like that? There might be people who can't plug in, but that'll happen regardless of swapping. You might make the argument that swapping could convince more people in that situation to buy the car, but that's hardly a downside for Tesla Motors. >it will shorten the battery's lifespan a lot It doesn't do that if you set your depth-of-discharge correctly. Lithium cells are more sensitive to temperature than charge cycles anyway.
bodyfour 13y ago
Plus the obvious problem that it presumes all automotive batteries will be electrically and mechanically identical... or at most there could be a small number of variants that they keep in stock. If all the world's a Model S it could work, but if electric cars become the future it seems likely there will be variation for different body styles, price ranges, etc. Battery swapping might have a niche future for urban fleet applications (taxis, police cars, ...) where battery ownership and vehicle diversity aren't issues. Maybe Tesla is trying to make moves there?
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  If all the world's a Model S it could work, but if electric cars become the future it seems likely there will be variation for different body styles, price ranges, etc. Funny, this isn't a problem in consumer electronics, where thousands of different devices from flashlights to ghetto blasters use one of a very small number of battery sizes. Don't think of it as swapping one monolithic battery... think of a Ferrari that runs on two 'AAA' cells, a Buick that runs on two 'AA's, a FedEx truck that runs on four 'C's, and an eighteen-wheeler that takes sixteen 'D' cells. Service stations would only need to stock a few discrete sizes.
  - jdeibele 13y ago
    It seems like an electric car could be made with two sets of batteries: one swappable and one not. Use the swappable one more or less where the gas tank is and use custom sized batteries elsewhere. You'd have to swap batteries more often on a long trip but I could see the swapping easily taking the same amount of time as filling a gas tank.
CamperBob2 13y ago
The problem is that the battery is such a huge part of the car's cost. It would make more sense to lease the battery. I don't think battery swapping is a great idea. On the contrary, it's the only way EVs can possibly work for the masses. The drawbacks of swappable batteries are substantial and worrisome, but the potential benefits are staggering.
- tlb 13y ago
  Why can't the masses just plug them in at night like current Tesla owners?
  - mynegation 13y ago
    Imagine you are told that you have to spend the night in the middle of nowhere on your weekend trip mere 600 kilometers from home. Just to charge the battery.
    - tlb 13y ago
      Tesla supercharger stations charge the batteries in an hour.
      - CamperBob2 13y ago
        Those are a gimmick. Completely non-scalable. Imagine the lines at gas stations if it took an hour to fill up. The thing I keep coming back to is this: as we transition to EVs, we have a once-in-a-century chance to do it right. Look how badly we screwed ourselves during most of the twentieth century when gasoline-powered cars started to become popular. Lead in gasoline. No emissions or crash-safety regulations. Transportation planning driven by politics rather than logic. We need to be a little smarter this time around. That means not allowing the market to evolve in a manner that leads to 20 different manufacturers selling us vehicles with hardwired proprietary batteries that we charge by plugging them into the same outlets that charge our electric toothbrushes. It's frustrating that nobody seems to understand how dumb that is.
  - 13y ago
dandelany 13y ago
I imagine that the proposed swapping stations would be able to automatically detect a damaged battery. I'm not an expert, but monitoring the voltage curve during a test charge/discharge cycle would probably get you pretty close. Remove them from the system and, assuming a subscription program, charge the offending driver for the cost of the battery or refurbishment.

waster 13y ago

If I understand the idea correctly, you'd be swapping out your (depleted from a road trip) battery for someone else's (or Tesla's, if they shifted to a model where they provide some of the batteries at the swap-out stations), and then next time you wanted to swap again, you'd get another one. Doesn't seem to me to be a factor for resale. Seems like they're pitching it instead as a way to increase the range of a car while on the road, though I'm willing to say I've misunderstood based on my (twice) read of the article. If they are planning to release further detail Thursday, though, that'll presumably clarify.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- lifeformed 13y ago
  Well, presumably the swapping company would make sure the batteries are well maintained. If someone swaps out a damaged battery, the process should detect that and charge them extra, and not put the bad battery in the queue for swapping.
  - skaevola 13y ago
    That opens up a whole can of worms. How do you quantify the damage? If my battery is degraded 10% do I pay $15,000 * .1 = $1,500 just to get back on the highway? Like I said, this is easy if the customers don't own the batteries, but right now they do, and those batteries are very expensive. I think perfecting the whole supercharging system makes more sense.
    - waster 13y ago
      If I were Tesla, I'd do both.
      - incompatible 13y ago
        Which would be nice for owners. Recharge your battery until it shows signs of age. Then swap it out repeatedly until you get a newish one, then go back to recharging only.
        schiffern 13y ago
        Self-service battery warranty. It's a win-win.
        akiselev 13y ago
        Combine it with a better recycling process: lithium based batteries are insanely energy intensive to produce to begin with so they are a great candidate. Then, chose the most efficient point in the life cycle to recycle the battery to recover the most cost. Since you're extremely unlikely to use a swap station for the first time after having used the car a long time, the risk to Tesla can be minimized. Factor in the price of recycling with a cynical view of the average user and everyone gets a price decrease on the batteries without the sticker shock of seeing the battery cost all at once. Really you'd sell your Tesla's with an already recycled battery and a couple of years of swapping thrown in. You can price it just like you price car insurance, based on amount of miles driven a year. Anything that puts more control of the most unproven tech into the hands of Tesla, the faster their batteries will improve. But maybe this is all just too expensive to implement without millions of cars on the road.
  - monting 13y ago
    Agreed. Though I imagine it'd be a subscription model, where if you're in the program, you won't have to worry about battery capacity/depreciation at all. The capacity of batteries in rotation would be maintained at a certain level, and the old batteries recycled or used as storage for the superchargers. I think it could potentially cost less than the monthly cost of gasoline for most people.
    - schiffern 13y ago
      >used as storage for the superchargers Superchargers don't use batteries. SolarCity does, though. http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx
      - monting 13y ago
        Oh but they do/will. Musk said that the ones with solar panels can go completely off the grid and continue to work in a zombie apocalypse. The only way that is accomplished is through energy storage. http://www.cnbc.com/id/100777849 http://www.cnbc.com/id/100777849
sp332 13y ago
If they take my (say) brand-new Southern California battery and replace it with someone's two-year-old Salt Belt battery, that's going to decrease the value of my car.
- schiffern 13y ago
  >that's going to decrease the value of my car. Forgive my ignorance, but how? Cheap battery swapping would mean that all batteries are essentially fungible. What stops the new owner from just swapping batteries again? What stops you? You're also forgetting that Tesla has a very generous battery warranty. Unless you don't think they'll honor it. http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/26/autos/tesla-service-gaurantee/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/26/autos/tesla-service-gaurante...
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Cheap battery swapping would mean that all batteries are essentially fungible Which will be interesting. I wonder if at that point the "tragedy of the commons" would start to set in. "Oh, it's ok if I run this battery totally flat all the time, it will shorten the battery's lifespan a lot, but I can just swap it for another!"
    - whatshisface 13y ago
      You could use the battery controller to implement restrictions. (E.g. allow it to be run flat only once per owner per month) or perhaps simply log the stresses they put on the unit and charge accordingly.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - schiffern 13y ago
      Why would you leave your car intentionally empty? Why inconvenience yourself like that? There might be people who can't plug in, but that'll happen regardless of swapping. You might make the argument that swapping could convince more people in that situation to buy the car, but that's hardly a downside for Tesla Motors. >it will shorten the battery's lifespan a lot It doesn't do that if you set your depth-of-discharge correctly. Lithium cells are more sensitive to temperature than charge cycles anyway.

bodyfour 13y ago

Plus the obvious problem that it presumes all automotive batteries will be electrically and mechanically identical... or at most there could be a small number of variants that they keep in stock. If all the world's a Model S it could work, but if electric cars become the future it seems likely there will be variation for different body styles, price ranges, etc. Battery swapping might have a niche future for urban fleet applications (taxis, police cars, ...) where battery ownership and vehicle diversity aren't issues. Maybe Tesla is trying to make moves there?

CamperBob2 13y ago
If all the world's a Model S it could work, but if electric cars become the future it seems likely there will be variation for different body styles, price ranges, etc. Funny, this isn't a problem in consumer electronics, where thousands of different devices from flashlights to ghetto blasters use one of a very small number of battery sizes. Don't think of it as swapping one monolithic battery... think of a Ferrari that runs on two 'AAA' cells, a Buick that runs on two 'AA's, a FedEx truck that runs on four 'C's, and an eighteen-wheeler that takes sixteen 'D' cells. Service stations would only need to stock a few discrete sizes.
- jdeibele 13y ago
  It seems like an electric car could be made with two sets of batteries: one swappable and one not. Use the swappable one more or less where the gas tank is and use custom sized batteries elsewhere. You'd have to swap batteries more often on a long trip but I could see the swapping easily taking the same amount of time as filling a gas tank.

CamperBob2 13y ago

The problem is that the battery is such a huge part of the car's cost. It would make more sense to lease the battery. I don't think battery swapping is a great idea. On the contrary, it's the only way EVs can possibly work for the masses. The drawbacks of swappable batteries are substantial and worrisome, but the potential benefits are staggering.

tlb 13y ago
Why can't the masses just plug them in at night like current Tesla owners?
- mynegation 13y ago
  Imagine you are told that you have to spend the night in the middle of nowhere on your weekend trip mere 600 kilometers from home. Just to charge the battery.
  - tlb 13y ago
    Tesla supercharger stations charge the batteries in an hour.
    - CamperBob2 13y ago
      Those are a gimmick. Completely non-scalable. Imagine the lines at gas stations if it took an hour to fill up. The thing I keep coming back to is this: as we transition to EVs, we have a once-in-a-century chance to do it right. Look how badly we screwed ourselves during most of the twentieth century when gasoline-powered cars started to become popular. Lead in gasoline. No emissions or crash-safety regulations. Transportation planning driven by politics rather than logic. We need to be a little smarter this time around. That means not allowing the market to evolve in a manner that leads to 20 different manufacturers selling us vehicles with hardwired proprietary batteries that we charge by plugging them into the same outlets that charge our electric toothbrushes. It's frustrating that nobody seems to understand how dumb that is.
- 13y ago

dandelany 13y ago

I imagine that the proposed swapping stations would be able to automatically detect a damaged battery. I'm not an expert, but monitoring the voltage curve during a test charge/discharge cycle would probably get you pretty close. Remove them from the system and, assuming a subscription program, charge the offending driver for the cost of the battery or refurbishment.