3 ms·

You're slightly off on a few points. A is handled in an automated fashion, in a similar way to many other modern service intervals. You don't have your average

You're slightly off on a few points. A is handled in an automated fashion, in a similar way to many other modern service intervals. You don't have your average BMW or Mercedes mechanic hooking up Siemens bits to jigs to verify traces in the same way that you wouldn't have your "average filling station worker" checking all the LiPo cells. Battery health checks are already built into the vehicle. B is handled by relatively simple tools for the purpose of moving around hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of battery components. C and D are trivial to solve. All of this has already been solved in the Model S. Deployment will take some time due to cost. [1] - http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap

R_Edward 13y ago
My point is simply that swapping batteries is not a simple, do-it-yourself process. The batteries are heavy, bulky (at least for now), and inconveniently shaped and mounted, necessitating additional labor, tools, and time to swap. And a battery of unknown provenance may harbor damage that is invisible to the human eye--there needs to be a health checker at the point of swapping, because if you don't get that checkup until after it's mounted in your car, you risk having to waste your time doing a second swap. And that equipment is also going to drive up the cost. I suspect that convenience and cost will tip the scales away from swapping and toward recharging, especially if the recharge cycle can be sped up and the infrastructure build-out continues.