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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.