4 ms·
I'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"
by brownbat 13y ago
I'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 :)
- codex 13y agoTesla uses a mechanically modified version of the commodity Panasonic 18650 battery, similar to an AA, ganged together in large quantities in a thermal and safety optimized enclosure. They are in fact very similar to cell phone batteries, chemically. Nissan, on the other hand, built a new battery manufacturing plant in the US, and makes their own from scratch. Once Tesla has the funds they would be wise to make battery manufacturing a core competency and vertically integrate manufacture to keep costs low.
- jzoidberg 13y agoYou get your original battery back on the way home.
- chad_oliver 13y agoI wouldn't be suprised if Tesla has added (or will add) a small monitoring chip to the battery pack, which would track statistics on battery quality and usage. That would make it very easy and quick to determine the relative value of each battery.
- bbq 13y agoI wonder if the economics will allow for an hacked battery market. Perhaps organized crime goes around with batteries lying about their age to make some $$$.
- bradleyland 13y agoThat would require a secondary market for the batteries. Tesla could fight this by building the battery swap in to the cost of ownership, just like they do with the free supercharger stations. In this scenario, the demand for second-hand Tesla batteries would be very soft, so it wouldn't be worth the criminal effort.
- BuddhaSource 13y agoMost of the batteries already have it. They keep a profile of the battery on a chip, this helps in factor in memory effect in batteries.
- huhtenberg 13y ago> Would you be willing to swap phone batteries with a stranger? In this case you are swapping with Tesla though. It's a big difference.
- kybernetikos 13y agoI assume you would rent your battery instead, and you pay more for renting a battery in prime condition vs renting a battery in moderate condition.
- brownbat 13y agohuhtenberg and jzoidberg noted that I'm talking about a different program than what Tesla's offering. That's true, I'm talking about what role battery swapping would ideally play in the infrastructure long term, vice supercharging stations or home charging. If 20 years from now Tesla's battery swapping operation means they control the entire fuel delivery system for transportation in the US, then we have other problems.