6 ms·

Tesla: It's faster to 'recharge' electric car than pump gas

40 points by scg 13y ago

MrSourz 13y ago
The one thing I didn't like about the demo is they showed it compared to refilling a car, but refilling a car adds more miles to your range than swapping out one of those batteries.
- akiselev 13y ago
  Still, 50% capacity at 200% refuel cost with 400% automobile cost (although I would argue it easily performs/feels like a luxury vehicle so really 100% cost) is pretty good considering the auto industry is about an order of magnitude older than Tesla motors.
thedrbrian 13y ago
How much will this cost? Really. Reuters reckons it'll be the same as filling a petrol car about $60 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-tesla-swap-idUSBRE95K07H20130621 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-tesla-swap-idUS... Edit:$60 apparently.
- droithomme 13y ago
  So $60 for 240 miles of range, or $4 to travel 16 miles.
  - ori_b 13y ago
    Or $10 for 240 miles of range, if you aren't on a long haul trip, and don't mind plugging it in at both ends of the commute.
    - droithomme 13y ago
      Yes, that should definitely be part of the analysis. $10 for the electricity, $50 for the prorated cost of the batteries. Every discussion should indeed take the battery life and factor it into cost of operation per mile, which is exactly what is being done with these battery swaps. Since the units are made up of commercial off the shelf cells such as the NCR18650A, the wholesale price in quantity of which is well known, and which have a known short lifespan, it is a simple matter to determine this cost. So yes, absolutely when talking of the cost of operation, we should consider both the electrical cost per recharge, and the cost of the battery.
jmduke 13y ago
The Tesla takes ninety seconds to get a battery which will last 235 miles. (http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts) The Audi A4 takes three minutes to get a tank of gas which will last 448 miles. (http://autos.aol.com/cars-Audi-A4-2013/specs/mpg/ http://autos.aol.com/cars-Audi-A4-2013/specs/mpg/)
- btian 13y ago
  While your point is valid, how often do you expect to have a battery swap? How often to you refill your car? Battery swap is for long road trips, not everyday usage.
  - clicks 13y ago
    I think we should just accept the poor range of Tesla and still root for it, because fundamentally, the technology is good for us and should be the future. We should accept it with all of its faults. I'm happy it made it through (while Fisker didn't), if only for the cool factor... or whatever is the reason Tesla made it and Fisker didn't. I hope it keeps on rocking, so it can fund more research into improving the battery life until EV are decidedly better than gasoline vehicles. On a side note -- I get 70mpg from my Prius C class when I'm supermiling. The car cost me 20k USD as I bought it new. I understand Toyota has a plugin hybrid too: http://www.toyota.com/prius-plug-in/ http://www.toyota.com/prius-plug-in/
    - pkulak 13y ago
      That's exactly it. There are so many downsides to internal combustion engines (exhaust that will literally kill you, horribly complicated with hundreds of moving parts, cost of fuel, etc), but no one ever mentions them when discussing the downsides to electric.
      - rallison 13y ago
        There is a lot of truth to this. If internal combustion engines were being rolled out today, people would be discussing those downsides. But, ICEs have been with us for quite some time, so we've accepted the downsides and mitigated where possible. This happens with anything that is new but competes with something that is old. Personally, I am strongly rooting for Tesla. Even is Tesla fails, they will have significantly changed the automobile landscape.
notdrunkatall 13y ago
> Each unit will include 50 loaner battery packs that Tesla owners can borrow for the equivalent of what it costs to fill up a tank of gasoline. The units will cost the company about $500,000 each to install. What does this mean?
- ksherlock 13y ago
  It's not a gas station, it's a block buster. You're not swapping, you're renting. And if don't re-swap back for your original battery, they charge you extra for it.
  - glenra 13y ago
    Keeping track of who owns which to ensure each user can get their battery back seems like a bit of a mess. Presumably they give you money back if you keep a battery that's older than the one you dropped off? If so, I frankly can't see how it's worth bothering trying to reunite batteries with their owners - just do the accounting and be done with it. Suppose I'm driving two thousand miles and I swap batteries once or twice every day along the route. If I don't take the same route back and stop at the exact same spots, I've moved a dozen batteries 200 miles away from where they were before. Whoever dropped off the batteries I picked up now can't plausibly get them back. On the other hand, suppose I DO plan to take the same route back. Suppose I drive 2000 miles, spend a week at my destination, then drive back. All the batteries I moved will be out of place for that week, so my schedule prevents their owners from getting the batteries back on their preferred schedule. I'm sure they'll work it out somehow. At least with the new system long driving trips are finally somewhat practical! (Or will be once the stations are in place, anyway.)
    - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
      Yes, your analysis illustrates how amateur and silly the Tesla plan is. Did they not run this by a focus group, or even ask somebody who drives long distances maybe? Nothing about the announced plan stands the slightest scrutiny. There were no answers for the simplest questions that occur to anybody who heard the plan.
machinagod 13y ago
Starting by congratulating Tesla in their system, which should win some converts, but there's something bothering me with it. An automobile network that's also owning their "refueling" network concerns me with the usual lock in concerns. What'd append when other brands want to offer the same service? A multitude of recharge posts all accross the land space each under their car brand flag? Figuring that there's only tesla and ford on this city, instead of the Nissan charging station that I need? This particular solution seems very specific to Tesla (or even only model S), is there any standard or independent initiative for battery-exchange stations?
- gdubs 13y ago
  Interestingly, the idea of a car company owning the charging station network was presented by Cringely on his column years ago. [1] Just listened to the podcast the other day and was struck by how similar Tesla's model is to what he presented. The entire segment is around the question of "how would Steve Jobs run a car company". 1: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20081207_005508.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20081207_0055...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
rphlx 13y ago
Even ignoring the range differences, this is misleading marketing. What happens when 500 cars show up at an urban Tesla battery swapper within 30 mins of each other on a Saturday morning? Anyone who's been to a Costco gas station knows that the petrol refill process is sustainable for hundreds of cars, while the battery swap is "draining a cache" of however many battery packs the station has pre-charged, which my guess is, way less than 100. They are gonna have a peak demand problem on holiday weekends, etc.
- emarcotte 13y ago
  Assuming the batteries are not just discarded when swapped, you'd end up charging them, right? If a stall can change 1 battery every 1.5 minutes, then it needs something like 60 batteries available, total. Take one out, start it charging on a super charger. 60 minutes later it's ready to be used.
  - rphlx 13y ago
    Once the cache of pre-charged batteries is empty, the latency is the charge time (~60 mins) and the throughput is the charge time multiplied by the number of chargers they have. So when they run out of pre-charged batteries, have 10 chargers at the station, and you're the 11th in line, you get to wait for 2 hours. "All you have to decide is fast or free, and how to cut in line" ;)
    - nmridul 13y ago
      The same issue with pumps when they run out of stock. Now you have to wait for the tankers to arrive ...
      - salgernon 13y ago
        Yea, I though the same thing. But I also remember the gas rationing in the 70s where you were only allowed to buy gas on alternate days (based on the last digit of your license plate) which could be the reality again if we continue our current rate of consumption. And I really don't get why people stand in line at a Costco for 20 minutes to save 15c gallon. $3 savings for 20 minutes "work"? Is their time really that cheap?
dmckeon 13y ago
Interesting timing on Tesla's part - announcing battery swap stations less than 4 weeks after battery-swap based Better Place announced (May 26) that they are shutting down. This is either an amazing fast pivot, or more likely Tesla had the swap capability designed in, but the swap station plan held in reserve to be able to announce swapping so quickly after the departure of Better Place from the battery swap niche.
Patrick_Devine 13y ago
I'm really hoping that Tesla licenses the technology to other electric car manufacturers and makes certain their other vehicles (Model X, Roadster) can use it. It would be really silly to have "Tesla Model-S only" service stations.
- jholman 13y ago
  The Roadster's never going to become magically forward-compatible. Just like it's physically incompatible with superchargers, I'm sure it's physically incompatible with having its battery swapped. Conversely, the X has a huge technology overlap with the S. So it's extremely likely that it will work compatibly. As for licensing the tech to other manufacturers, Elon has already said he's willing to talk with other companies about making the superchargers available, although there's accounting to be worked out.
jdietrich 13y ago
What people don't realise is that hardly anyone needs to use this sort of infrastructure regularly. We fixate on the range of a gasoline tank, thinking that an electric car must match that range if it's to be useful. In truth, long range driving is a very niche use case. How many times in the last year did you start a trip with a full tank and need to refuel before you reached your destination? The mode answer to that question is zero. According to the Department of Energy, the average vehicle trip is just 10.1 miles. 98% of car journeys are less than 50 miles. Battery swap technology is irrelevant and always will be. It's a great marketing move by Tesla, because it undermines one of the key arguments against electric cars, but it has little or no practical importance. The fast-charge infrastructure is what matters, because it's cheap enough to realistically become ubiquitous. We're just very poor at translating our experience of car ownership to electric technology. There's a long thread of comments about peak demand, in which several people clearly haven't internalised the idea that you can charge your electric car at home, so you only need to use a fast-charge or battery swap facility if you've just driven 300 miles in the same day.
- glenra 13y ago
  > How many times in the last year did you start a trip with a full tank and need to refuel before you reached your destination? Well, there was that time in the last year that I drove from New York to Jackson, Wyoming and back (~2000 miles each way). If I did that in a Tesla I'd want to battery-swap once or twice a day. Um, it looks like that might be possible sometime in the next year or two. Hurray! (right now there aren't even any supercharger stations along that route, much less battery-swapping ones. There's an interactive map of stations here: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger ) Though there's another question about that: How do you charge overnight at a hotel? Do you stay at motels and run an extension cord out the window? Is there a special database somewhere of hotels with convenient charging stations?

40 points by scg 13y ago

The one thing I didn't like about the demo is they showed it compared to refilling a car, but refilling a car adds more miles to your range than swapping out one of those batteries.

akiselev 13y ago
Still, 50% capacity at 200% refuel cost with 400% automobile cost (although I would argue it easily performs/feels like a luxury vehicle so really 100% cost) is pretty good considering the auto industry is about an order of magnitude older than Tesla motors.

thedrbrian 13y ago

How much will this cost? Really. Reuters reckons it'll be the same as filling a petrol car about $60 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-tesla-swap-idUSBRE95K07H20130621 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-tesla-swap-idUS... Edit:$60 apparently.

droithomme 13y ago
So $60 for 240 miles of range, or $4 to travel 16 miles.
- ori_b 13y ago
  Or $10 for 240 miles of range, if you aren't on a long haul trip, and don't mind plugging it in at both ends of the commute.
  - droithomme 13y ago
    Yes, that should definitely be part of the analysis. $10 for the electricity, $50 for the prorated cost of the batteries. Every discussion should indeed take the battery life and factor it into cost of operation per mile, which is exactly what is being done with these battery swaps. Since the units are made up of commercial off the shelf cells such as the NCR18650A, the wholesale price in quantity of which is well known, and which have a known short lifespan, it is a simple matter to determine this cost. So yes, absolutely when talking of the cost of operation, we should consider both the electrical cost per recharge, and the cost of the battery.

jmduke 13y ago

The Tesla takes ninety seconds to get a battery which will last 235 miles. (http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts) The Audi A4 takes three minutes to get a tank of gas which will last 448 miles. (http://autos.aol.com/cars-Audi-A4-2013/specs/mpg/ http://autos.aol.com/cars-Audi-A4-2013/specs/mpg/)

btian 13y ago
While your point is valid, how often do you expect to have a battery swap? How often to you refill your car? Battery swap is for long road trips, not everyday usage.
- clicks 13y ago
  I think we should just accept the poor range of Tesla and still root for it, because fundamentally, the technology is good for us and should be the future. We should accept it with all of its faults. I'm happy it made it through (while Fisker didn't), if only for the cool factor... or whatever is the reason Tesla made it and Fisker didn't. I hope it keeps on rocking, so it can fund more research into improving the battery life until EV are decidedly better than gasoline vehicles. On a side note -- I get 70mpg from my Prius C class when I'm supermiling. The car cost me 20k USD as I bought it new. I understand Toyota has a plugin hybrid too: http://www.toyota.com/prius-plug-in/ http://www.toyota.com/prius-plug-in/
  - pkulak 13y ago
    That's exactly it. There are so many downsides to internal combustion engines (exhaust that will literally kill you, horribly complicated with hundreds of moving parts, cost of fuel, etc), but no one ever mentions them when discussing the downsides to electric.
    - rallison 13y ago
      There is a lot of truth to this. If internal combustion engines were being rolled out today, people would be discussing those downsides. But, ICEs have been with us for quite some time, so we've accepted the downsides and mitigated where possible. This happens with anything that is new but competes with something that is old. Personally, I am strongly rooting for Tesla. Even is Tesla fails, they will have significantly changed the automobile landscape.

notdrunkatall 13y ago

> Each unit will include 50 loaner battery packs that Tesla owners can borrow for the equivalent of what it costs to fill up a tank of gasoline. The units will cost the company about $500,000 each to install. What does this mean?

ksherlock 13y ago
It's not a gas station, it's a block buster. You're not swapping, you're renting. And if don't re-swap back for your original battery, they charge you extra for it.
- glenra 13y ago
  Keeping track of who owns which to ensure each user can get their battery back seems like a bit of a mess. Presumably they give you money back if you keep a battery that's older than the one you dropped off? If so, I frankly can't see how it's worth bothering trying to reunite batteries with their owners - just do the accounting and be done with it. Suppose I'm driving two thousand miles and I swap batteries once or twice every day along the route. If I don't take the same route back and stop at the exact same spots, I've moved a dozen batteries 200 miles away from where they were before. Whoever dropped off the batteries I picked up now can't plausibly get them back. On the other hand, suppose I DO plan to take the same route back. Suppose I drive 2000 miles, spend a week at my destination, then drive back. All the batteries I moved will be out of place for that week, so my schedule prevents their owners from getting the batteries back on their preferred schedule. I'm sure they'll work it out somehow. At least with the new system long driving trips are finally somewhat practical! (Or will be once the stations are in place, anyway.)
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Yes, your analysis illustrates how amateur and silly the Tesla plan is. Did they not run this by a focus group, or even ask somebody who drives long distances maybe? Nothing about the announced plan stands the slightest scrutiny. There were no answers for the simplest questions that occur to anybody who heard the plan.

machinagod 13y ago

Starting by congratulating Tesla in their system, which should win some converts, but there's something bothering me with it. An automobile network that's also owning their "refueling" network concerns me with the usual lock in concerns. What'd append when other brands want to offer the same service? A multitude of recharge posts all accross the land space each under their car brand flag? Figuring that there's only tesla and ford on this city, instead of the Nissan charging station that I need? This particular solution seems very specific to Tesla (or even only model S), is there any standard or independent initiative for battery-exchange stations?

gdubs 13y ago
Interestingly, the idea of a car company owning the charging station network was presented by Cringely on his column years ago. [1] Just listened to the podcast the other day and was struck by how similar Tesla's model is to what he presented. The entire segment is around the question of "how would Steve Jobs run a car company". 1: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20081207_005508.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20081207_0055...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

rphlx 13y ago

Even ignoring the range differences, this is misleading marketing. What happens when 500 cars show up at an urban Tesla battery swapper within 30 mins of each other on a Saturday morning? Anyone who's been to a Costco gas station knows that the petrol refill process is sustainable for hundreds of cars, while the battery swap is "draining a cache" of however many battery packs the station has pre-charged, which my guess is, way less than 100. They are gonna have a peak demand problem on holiday weekends, etc.

emarcotte 13y ago
Assuming the batteries are not just discarded when swapped, you'd end up charging them, right? If a stall can change 1 battery every 1.5 minutes, then it needs something like 60 batteries available, total. Take one out, start it charging on a super charger. 60 minutes later it's ready to be used.
- rphlx 13y ago
  Once the cache of pre-charged batteries is empty, the latency is the charge time (~60 mins) and the throughput is the charge time multiplied by the number of chargers they have. So when they run out of pre-charged batteries, have 10 chargers at the station, and you're the 11th in line, you get to wait for 2 hours. "All you have to decide is fast or free, and how to cut in line" ;)
  - nmridul 13y ago
    The same issue with pumps when they run out of stock. Now you have to wait for the tankers to arrive ...
    - salgernon 13y ago
      Yea, I though the same thing. But I also remember the gas rationing in the 70s where you were only allowed to buy gas on alternate days (based on the last digit of your license plate) which could be the reality again if we continue our current rate of consumption. And I really don't get why people stand in line at a Costco for 20 minutes to save 15c gallon. $3 savings for 20 minutes "work"? Is their time really that cheap?

dmckeon 13y ago

Interesting timing on Tesla's part - announcing battery swap stations less than 4 weeks after battery-swap based Better Place announced (May 26) that they are shutting down. This is either an amazing fast pivot, or more likely Tesla had the swap capability designed in, but the swap station plan held in reserve to be able to announce swapping so quickly after the departure of Better Place from the battery swap niche.

Patrick_Devine 13y ago

I'm really hoping that Tesla licenses the technology to other electric car manufacturers and makes certain their other vehicles (Model X, Roadster) can use it. It would be really silly to have "Tesla Model-S only" service stations.

jholman 13y ago
The Roadster's never going to become magically forward-compatible. Just like it's physically incompatible with superchargers, I'm sure it's physically incompatible with having its battery swapped. Conversely, the X has a huge technology overlap with the S. So it's extremely likely that it will work compatibly. As for licensing the tech to other manufacturers, Elon has already said he's willing to talk with other companies about making the superchargers available, although there's accounting to be worked out.

jdietrich 13y ago

What people don't realise is that hardly anyone needs to use this sort of infrastructure regularly. We fixate on the range of a gasoline tank, thinking that an electric car must match that range if it's to be useful. In truth, long range driving is a very niche use case. How many times in the last year did you start a trip with a full tank and need to refuel before you reached your destination? The mode answer to that question is zero. According to the Department of Energy, the average vehicle trip is just 10.1 miles. 98% of car journeys are less than 50 miles. Battery swap technology is irrelevant and always will be. It's a great marketing move by Tesla, because it undermines one of the key arguments against electric cars, but it has little or no practical importance. The fast-charge infrastructure is what matters, because it's cheap enough to realistically become ubiquitous. We're just very poor at translating our experience of car ownership to electric technology. There's a long thread of comments about peak demand, in which several people clearly haven't internalised the idea that you can charge your electric car at home, so you only need to use a fast-charge or battery swap facility if you've just driven 300 miles in the same day.

glenra 13y ago
> How many times in the last year did you start a trip with a full tank and need to refuel before you reached your destination? Well, there was that time in the last year that I drove from New York to Jackson, Wyoming and back (~2000 miles each way). If I did that in a Tesla I'd want to battery-swap once or twice a day. Um, it looks like that might be possible sometime in the next year or two. Hurray! (right now there aren't even any supercharger stations along that route, much less battery-swapping ones. There's an interactive map of stations here: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger ) Though there's another question about that: How do you charge overnight at a hotel? Do you stay at motels and run an extension cord out the window? Is there a special database somewhere of hotels with convenient charging stations?