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Tesla announces 90 sec battery swap
- sbashyal 13y agoThis sounds like the future of automobile - why do we still need to step out of our cars to refuel?
- dave5104 13y agoYou don't in New Jersey and Oregon. Gas attendants do that for you.
- sbashyal 13y agoThat's even more backwards in my opinion. The fact that it takes a human to fuel the car was my point.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoIf every car had NASCAR style fill holes all in the same place, a robot could probably insert a hose and fill you up. As it is now, I would not trust an automatic robot arm to locate my fuel door, open my fuel door, twist off my cap, place cap in out of way spot, insert hose to fill, replace cap and close fuel door without ever scratching my car. Who is responsible when it malfunctions and scratches the shit out of it? Or misses and pumps gass all over the ground? Right now if that happens, it is my fault and I'll deal with the fix later. I'd rather not have to deal with some service station who is just going to claim the fault is with the robot manufacturer who is probably going to blame the car manufacturer. I can pump my own gas, thanks. (I'm looking at you too Oregon!)
- learc83 13y ago>I would not trust an automatic robot arm For 95% of newish cars this problem is fairly trivial because the gas cap/fuel doors are so similar (there are exceptions, I'm specifically thinking of cars that require you to press a button inside the car to open the refueling port), and any college robotics lab could design a system to handle it that was much less likely to scratch your car/spill gas than a human operator. The problem is that in Oregon/New Jersey it's a jobs program, so regulators are unlikely to allow something like that. In every other state, gas stations have no incentive to pay for such a system because they have no labor costs to save.
- zalew 13y agoDepends how you look at it. In hi-tech Japan low-level dull jobs are encouraged because they prefer that to unemployment. Thus there are 3 people servicing your car on the gas station (I only read about it, not sure if still true), every one of them has healthcare, etc. Nation-wide, in the long run supporting such jobs may be cheaper than dealing with the side-effects of unemployment. As a different example, in GCC countries immigrants also tank your car, but there it's just cheap means of comfort.
- learc83 13y agoIt's much more efficient to just give the money out directly via a negative income tax, or a guaranteed basic income if that's your goal.
- hrktb 13y agoIt's the same way ofthinking as a luxuory hotel. There's a groom bringing your luggages to your suite, not a sophisticated warehouse style system shuffling them around. Having a guy/girl fill in the tank at the station is not efficient, but it makes a better service experience, it' also less error prone and stress free. BTW most people 'standing there doing nothing but X' in Japan are actually very valuable and can help you in a lot of matters, even completely unrelated to X. Unefficient but priceless if you have a special need or just don't know how things work.
- sliverstorm 13y agoIs it? Jobs provide all sorts of intangibles. You can't derive job satisfaction and a feeling of value to your community if you don't have a job. Neither of these things are requisite, but can be beneficial to the community.
- zalew 13y agoI'm yet to hear of an example where giving money away to the unemployed cured socio-economical problems, especially in cultures where there is a social stigma attached to joblessness and living off benefits. Hiring for low wage jobs doesn't necessarily raise financial status, but gives access to social services and prevents side-effects like detachment from the job market, petty crimes, mental illnesses and addictions. Or to put it more simply: do you prefer an unemployed who's got cash for booze and nothing to do, or would you prefer him to be at work like all his peers and family?
- TannerLD 13y ago"Return the pack on your journey back or keep it & we'll bill you the difference." Are there different battery types/options available that cost different prices?
- sbashyal 13y agoYes, there are a few batteries types with different capacities that give various range to the car. So it sounds like the ones who bought a lower-capacity battery can extend their range by swapping their battery while traveling.
- schiffern 13y agoThere are actually only two batteries – 85 kWh and 60 kWh. The 40 kWh was discontinued.
- chad_oliver 13y agoI expect they'll also run a full set of tests on the battery, so they could charge you more if you give them an old worn-down battery and get a new battery in exchange.
- ck2 13y agoThis is great but remember no existing model can do a battery swap. Only the next gen which has been re-engineered will be able.
- iamshs 13y agoWow. This is incredible. Nicely designed, electric power vehicles. Incredible. Finally, after around 130 years of IC engine, we are onto the next step. And this step is such a simple method to refuel. Better than spending 30 mins recharging from ground up. Why are we going towards electric vehicles? To reduce dependency upon conventional fuels. From where will electricity come? Nuclear Energy. Can long term derivative benefits and harm be predicted? Spent nuclear fuel storage and getting rare earth minerals seem to be only obvious ones to me.
- chad_oliver 13y agoIt's only wishful thinking at this stage, but I'm really looking forward to fusion power. Conventional nuclear has many downsides that fusion doesn't suffer from.
- cdash 13y agoNot enough to wait.
- chad_oliver 13y agoAh, sorry. I didn't mean to imply that I wouldn't buy an electric car until we have fusion; only that I'm really looking forward to fusion. I've edited my comment to make it more clear.
- iamshs 13y agoDefinitely, there will be progress. Right now, conventional fuels provide 80% of electricity. It is estimated that by 2100, fusion energy will provide 20% of electricity generation.
- chc 13y agoAs best I can gather, that estimate seems to be about as reliable as a weather forecast for 2100. We don't even have one working fusion reactor today, so we have literally no useful data from which to extrapolate.
- cicloid 13y agoI'm still waiting for Mr. Fusion in my car.
- austenallred 13y agoI'm calling it a long, long way in advance, but Tesla has won. Game, set, and match - in 50 years we will all be driving electric cars. With the battery swap Tesla has finally alleviated the "cross-country road trip" problem in a way that superchargers really couldn't. Now when you are comparing car vs. car you have no reason to turn your nose up at electric. And with Tesla making the best cars ever in the luxury sedan price range, they will likely do the same as they scale and create an economy car. The cost of batteries and production will continue to drop until the only real choice you're making is Tesla vs. Chevrolet. And Tesla makes better cars. If I weren't a broke startup founder I would pour in all my money to Tesla stock.
- iamshs 13y agoThis is also an incentive to improve tech in some of the directly related fields: Solar, Battery tech, Self driving cars. Electric cars are huge improvement, which will lube lots of gears into motion 15-20 years down the line. But I also want to see what German and Japanese car makers bring to the forefront. It is also important to have competition.
- coolsunglasses 13y ago>Tesla has finally alleviated the "cross-country road trip" problem in a way that superchargers really couldn't. As someone who's taken a one-way cross-country trip before (NYC->SF), no, no they haven't. The system only works if it's round trip. Gas powered vehicles continue to be more practical unless you are firmly confined to a 100 mile radius in your vehicular needs and can afford to supplement your electric with an extra vehicle (the case for all Tesla owners so far) and/or alternate modes of transport.
- backprojection 13y ago> The system only works if it's round trip. I'm confused, why is this? From the tweet: "Return the pack on your journey back or keep it & we'll bill you the difference"
- theguycalledtom 13y ago
- jcdavis 13y agoI'm still confused on the details of this. Surely you'll be required to come back on the way back and swap back into your original battery? (for warranty reasons). Seems like a complex & expensive logistical nightmare (vs the simplicity of superchargers)
- eisen 13y agoMaybe I'm crazy but if it is a physical battery swap then this brings memories of history class. Horses were swapped along the silk road to extend distance in shorter range of time. Same goes for horses as do batteries I guess. They get the job well on more available energy but take for ever to regain to keep going. 2c of thought
- sliverstorm 13y agoI really doubt horses were fungible. I don't know the actual details, but I would expect when you swapped horses, you got off a company horse and got on another company horse.
- iamshs 13y agoDrivers can either return the fresh battery pack upon their journey past the service station, or keep it. Tesla will bill later for the difference in value, and Musk says that the service will cost about the same as a tank of gas. Source: http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/21/4450664/tesla-model-s-battery-swap-demo http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/21/4450664/tesla-model-s-batt...
- Someone 13y ago"Musk says that the service will cost about the same as a tank of gas." So, if you use this regularly, the cost benefit of electric cars decreases. Probably not much of a problem, as most trips are short and doable 'on your own battery'. It is an incentive to get your own battery back, though, and also may keep the actual usage of the service down a bit, so that they don't need to store zillions of batteries everywhere.
- mtgx 13y agoA camera recording of how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VH4JloWFEI&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VH4JloWFEI&feature=youtu.be
- prawn 13y agoSimilar to swap-n-go for BBQ gas bottles. You might've bought the original tank, but after the first swap, it goes into the pool for refill and supply to others.
- adamtulinius 13y agoInteresting. Not long ago Better Place (at least in Denmark) went bankrupt, and now the Renault Fluence-owners are having problems due to all chargers (even home-installed onces) are/were connected to Better Place, and isn't providing any electricity right now. There's also the entire problem with the car-owners only renting the battery.. Anyways, Tesla were smart; they made a product people desired before building expensive battery-swap infrastructure. In Denmark, only about 200-250 cars that could use the battery-swap facilities were sold, so no wonder the company went bankrupt.
- gcb0 13y agoThat may work for model s market... But even they came up with model cheap, this will be all kinds of nightmare from smart ppl "returning" all sorts of junk batteries.
- kalleboo 13y agoIf all batteries are built and sold by Tesla, it would be easy to put battery health monitoring in there to test them before swapping them out. The cars are already all online and pinging home their battery level (see the stories about Tesla contacting owners who left their car in a garage and their battery is about to be irrecoverably discharged)
- gcb0 13y ago(cheap) nature will find a way :)
- sown 13y agoSo I guess the near-term future is to commoditize the battery like Blue Rhino propane tanks you can swap around at the grocery store?
- Jach 13y agoThat's what I thought, though "bill you the difference" indicates they're not treating their batteries like propane tanks. Hopefully someday.
- cdash 13y agoYeah, it sounds like you have a couple options. You can return to the station you swapped your battery at and get your old one back. You can also decide to keep the battery and you will either end up paying a certain amount of money that is determined in how much better condition the battery you have now is than your old battery or you can pay to have your old battery shipped to wherever you are.
- tmzt 13y agoIf that's the case how they avoid storage costs for the batteries in the automated retrieval system? What's the upper limit on batteries that can be kept at a single location? What about a two week plus trip?
- cdash 13y agoI don't know what the limit is but I think they said 50 batteries to start with more added at a later date as needed. But yeah, I would assume they might need to end up charging for leaving your battery there for an extended length of time.
- brownbat 13y agoI've seesawed on this over the last few years. I. The Good I was originally* a big fan, faster than gas stations, but still compatible with at home "pumping" for city driving. It's basically a propane refill model, shops could buy back your old battery while they sold you a new one, so eventually you're really just paying for the energy at basically no wait. II. The Bad I grew more pessimistic as I started shopping for aftermarket cell phone batteries, noticing that: a) Batteries degrade over time (in terms of capacity or depth of discharge) b) Batteries are expensive, especially car batteries (though this should improve over time) c) It's impossible to really know the exact capacity of a battery without a power cycle or two Would you be willing to swap phone batteries with a stranger? What if the battery cost $4000? Who eats the cost of lemon batteries on the market? Does a sort of Gresham's Law kick in where suddenly everyone's dumping a lemon in every transaction? Buying gas involves some trust, trust that they're not loading it up with crud, that it really has the energy capacity it says it does, that it's not 30% ethanol instead of 0, 10, 15. But I believe, based on the factors above, the trust relationship with a battery refill is a little more intense. III. The Beautiful? That said, now I'm of course swinging optimistic again. Car and Driver taught us that Tesla's diagnostic tools are awesome. Serial individual batteries, let the owner see its entire history, hidden lemon problem basically solved. Maybe build some "insurance" into battery costs, guarantee certain lifespan, smoothe out the cost of duds. Musk can dodge some of the authentication problems by just keeping a tight grip on the infrastructure and the technology, but for this to really take off, Musk will want to allow competition, standardize battery swapping tech, encourage mom and pop "battery stations" to quickly build out the infrastructure in all the small towns he doesn't know are on the map. Not sure if that's in his personality though... * Originally = Few years back I sat on a few panels for energy and transportation, wrote some white papers, nothing big. EDIT: formatting, headings
- gt565k 13y agoTesla's batteries aren't your regular cellphone battery... Not to mention Musk said they have partnered with Panasonic and are working on battery research for the future. Tesla's Shareholder Meeting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3AcKTmaoE8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3AcKTmaoE8 Worth watching if you got an hour and a half to kill :)
- sliverstorm 13y agoHeh, approaching the fill time of my 2-gallon motorcycle in college. :)
- codfrantic 13y agoI have a 4-gallon motorcycle and I love not getting off / taking off helmet at pumps where I pay through a terminal at the pump :-D
- pixie_ 13y agoAll a gas station needs to do is hold enough batteries to match the rate of customer arrival over the time it takes to recharge a battery, plus a safety factor of X. Stations can add more batteries to their pool over time as more people start driving electric vehicles. And instead of daily fuel tankers, occasionally a truck comes to the station with replacement batteries for those detected to be worn out. It could be a really great system if Tesla makes it easy to setup and handles most of the work automatically delivering new batteries when demand increases, and replacing worn out ones. Someone should do the math of how many 'equivelent fill ups' it takes to pay for a battery, and then subtract that from the total amount of fill ups possible before wearing out and electricity cost. I have a feeling this could be a very profitable investment.
- danboarder 13y agoI wonder if they have licensed technology from Better Place, which has been doing battery-swap electric car fill-up stations for several years now (see http://www.betterplace.com/ http://www.betterplace.com/ ).
- schiffern 13y agoThey went bankrupt. Also this: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/347005150860283905 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/347005150860283905
- huhtenberg 13y agoI bet that today's announcement is Tesla's first step towards full-blown "battery as a service" offering. You will own the car, but not the battery. Instead, you will lease it from Tesla with an option to swap it at will and as frequently as you'd like. For example, on any charging station, in less than 2 minutes. That'd be very Musk-like thing to do.
- rurounijones 13y agoI don't really understand all this talk about "Your" battery, "My" battery etc. since it doesn't seem to be the sane way to do things. Sell me the car without battery, make me sign up for a battery service at $X per month which guarantees access to batteries at the swap-stations (The first 'swap' being done when I get the car) and done. Let me treat batteries like I treat AWS servers, totally replaceable cattle. No ownership issues, no "swap YOUR good battery for a dud one" issues.
- jhuckestein 13y agoThe "Your" battery talk happens because Tesla charges extra for cars with larger batteries. I agree, though, that this will likely not be the case one or two generations down the line.