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As an engineer I would have preferred to have seen a shot from under the car showing the actual process. It's unfortunate that they chose to record it from a h

As an engineer I would have preferred to have seen a shot from under the car showing the actual process. It's unfortunate that they chose to record it from a hundred feet away. As for the reality of this swap deal. Well, it sounds like a logistical pain in the ass. You are required to come back and get your original battery pack back or pay the difference in cost for the new one. Option number two could be in the thousands of dollars. That means your trip logistics now have to adjust to the location of that particular station or else. Hypothetically, say you travel from LA to SFO and stay there for work for three months. Will they hold your original battery pack or will it be used to swap into other cars? Your battery could end-up in Nebraska. Then what? How many stations will have this tech and when? Are they, perhaps, going to charge and store your pack and then somehow ship it to a station near you for reclaiming? If that's the case that would make for a very expensive power-up. At the end of the day I fail to see how this might convince skeptics unless they suck at math and logical reasoning. Sadly this is very much like their creative financing scheme. Cool tech but it would have been nice to have gotten far more detail on all points. Don't get me wrong. I really like Tesla. I am waiting for the SUV and will more than likely buy two of them.

lotu 13y ago
Well if we assume you only do battery swaps then the cost of your "old" battery would be almost the cost of a new battery so that case you would be paying only small amount for each battery swap. The reason they do this would be because otherwise someone with a 3 year old battery that needs replacement would be able to get a new battery effectively for free.
- arthulia 13y ago
  If you swapped batteries for a recurring subscription fee, it would help to offset the cost of batteries wearing out. Battery replacement is a huge problem with electric and hybrid vehicles right now. The cost of replacing the battery is similar to the cost of replacing a combustion engine, yet the battery will wear out considerably sooner. A good system like this could remove that factor entirely. A company called BetterPlace[0] has/had plans to do this. [0] http://www.betterplace.com/How-it-Works/battery-switch-stations http://www.betterplace.com/How-it-Works/battery-switch-stati...
JPKab 13y ago
I think the business model needs to mimic that of the BetterPlace idea: Users of battery swapping stations pay a monthly fee, and the battery is seen more as a commodity which is rented by the user, but owned by the company. Coming back to get a battery is absurd, and should never happen.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Exactly. I've had this debate/argument many times with HN'ers. For some reason, people around here are unnaturally attached to the idea of owning a particular car battery. I've tried to see it from my interlocutors' point of view, but the point still isn't getting through to me, I'm afraid.
  - danielweber 13y ago
    I agree. It strikes me as insane to swap out a ten-to-twenty thousand dollar piece of your car on any regular basis.
    - CamperBob2 13y ago
      Can you elaborate on why you feel that way? Are you mostly concerned about being unable to gauge the remaining life of a "used" battery that's been in someone else's car, or do you see it as a pride-of-ownership sort of thing?
      - danielweber 13y ago
        Right, if I get someone else's, and later we trade back, what happens if we each think there is a problem the other caused by (say) pushing it too hard? If Tesla only loans you a Tesla battery and you have to swap back to yours that they don't give anywhere else, that could make it manageable.
        CamperBob2 13y ago
        There would never be an opportunity for he-said/she-said arguments to occur. The battery would have extensive data logging (like the rest of the Tesla itself) to keep very careful records of how each owner treated it. Put another way, it would be like leasing the car itself. If you abuse a leased car severely enough, there's a good chance the dealer will find some evidence of it when you turn the car in. In return for not having to pay as much for the battery, and being able to swap it out at any time, you would have an economic incentive not to discharge it excessively or otherwise mistreat it.
justin66 13y ago
> Well, it sounds like a logistical pain in the ass. You are required to come back and get your original battery pack back or pay the difference in cost for the new one. I imagine they'll get rid of the "come back for your battery" functionality eventually. It's just kind of goofy and unnecessary. Credit me if I get a slightly older/more worn battery than the one I was driving with, bill me if I get a slightly newer battery, and use this system as a way to pretty much eliminate the whole panic surrounding electric cars and what happens when the battery gets old and decrepit. If the system demands a shorter lifecycle for batteries before they're reconditioned (as you'd really want to avoid DRASTIC differences in cost and performance between batteries of the same class when people pull into a station) it might add some cost to the overall system. I don't believe it will represent a profound increase in cost.
smackfu 13y ago
I would have loved to see the details too. It takes a mechanic longer than 90 seconds to change a tire, so it's pretty impressive if they can really change a very heavy battery pack in that much time. I suppose it's probably using tech similar to what's on a factory floor. If you need to fasten/unfasten twelve bolts, and you want to do it very fast, you just use twelve separate air ratchets on a tooling. If you need to move a thousand pounds of battery, you use an arm that is designed to do just that, and only that.
- Pwnguinz 13y ago
  Elon explains that it was using the same machine as in the manufacturing factory.
andyjsong 13y ago
Here is a closer look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH-H3-F4Ztc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH-H3-F4Ztc Looks like it's held on by 18-20 bolts.

lotu 13y ago

Well if we assume you only do battery swaps then the cost of your "old" battery would be almost the cost of a new battery so that case you would be paying only small amount for each battery swap. The reason they do this would be because otherwise someone with a 3 year old battery that needs replacement would be able to get a new battery effectively for free.

arthulia 13y ago
If you swapped batteries for a recurring subscription fee, it would help to offset the cost of batteries wearing out. Battery replacement is a huge problem with electric and hybrid vehicles right now. The cost of replacing the battery is similar to the cost of replacing a combustion engine, yet the battery will wear out considerably sooner. A good system like this could remove that factor entirely. A company called BetterPlace[0] has/had plans to do this. [0] http://www.betterplace.com/How-it-Works/battery-switch-stations http://www.betterplace.com/How-it-Works/battery-switch-stati...

JPKab 13y ago

I think the business model needs to mimic that of the BetterPlace idea: Users of battery swapping stations pay a monthly fee, and the battery is seen more as a commodity which is rented by the user, but owned by the company. Coming back to get a battery is absurd, and should never happen.

CamperBob2 13y ago
Exactly. I've had this debate/argument many times with HN'ers. For some reason, people around here are unnaturally attached to the idea of owning a particular car battery. I've tried to see it from my interlocutors' point of view, but the point still isn't getting through to me, I'm afraid.
- danielweber 13y ago
  I agree. It strikes me as insane to swap out a ten-to-twenty thousand dollar piece of your car on any regular basis.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    Can you elaborate on why you feel that way? Are you mostly concerned about being unable to gauge the remaining life of a "used" battery that's been in someone else's car, or do you see it as a pride-of-ownership sort of thing?
    - danielweber 13y ago
      Right, if I get someone else's, and later we trade back, what happens if we each think there is a problem the other caused by (say) pushing it too hard? If Tesla only loans you a Tesla battery and you have to swap back to yours that they don't give anywhere else, that could make it manageable.
      - CamperBob2 13y ago
        There would never be an opportunity for he-said/she-said arguments to occur. The battery would have extensive data logging (like the rest of the Tesla itself) to keep very careful records of how each owner treated it. Put another way, it would be like leasing the car itself. If you abuse a leased car severely enough, there's a good chance the dealer will find some evidence of it when you turn the car in. In return for not having to pay as much for the battery, and being able to swap it out at any time, you would have an economic incentive not to discharge it excessively or otherwise mistreat it.

justin66 13y ago

> Well, it sounds like a logistical pain in the ass. You are required to come back and get your original battery pack back or pay the difference in cost for the new one. I imagine they'll get rid of the "come back for your battery" functionality eventually. It's just kind of goofy and unnecessary. Credit me if I get a slightly older/more worn battery than the one I was driving with, bill me if I get a slightly newer battery, and use this system as a way to pretty much eliminate the whole panic surrounding electric cars and what happens when the battery gets old and decrepit. If the system demands a shorter lifecycle for batteries before they're reconditioned (as you'd really want to avoid DRASTIC differences in cost and performance between batteries of the same class when people pull into a station) it might add some cost to the overall system. I don't believe it will represent a profound increase in cost.

smackfu 13y ago

I would have loved to see the details too. It takes a mechanic longer than 90 seconds to change a tire, so it's pretty impressive if they can really change a very heavy battery pack in that much time. I suppose it's probably using tech similar to what's on a factory floor. If you need to fasten/unfasten twelve bolts, and you want to do it very fast, you just use twelve separate air ratchets on a tooling. If you need to move a thousand pounds of battery, you use an arm that is designed to do just that, and only that.

Pwnguinz 13y ago
Elon explains that it was using the same machine as in the manufacturing factory.

andyjsong 13y ago

Here is a closer look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH-H3-F4Ztc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH-H3-F4Ztc Looks like it's held on by 18-20 bolts.