

Tesla Shows Off A 90-Second Battery Swap System - ghayes
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/20/tesla-shows-off-a-90-second-battery-swap-system-wants-it-at-supercharging-stations-by-years-end/

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codeulike
It makes sense that they built the battery to be swappable but its pretty
incredible that they managed to keep this as a post-launch surprise. Everyone
last month was like 'well I dont see how that can be possible, the battery
makes up most of the car frame etc'. But they'd planned it this way all along.

Its as if the new iPhone came with a swappable battery but Apple kept it quiet
till six months after launch.

~~~
masklinn
> Its as if the new iPhone came with a swappable battery but Apple kept it
> quiet till six months after launch.

Since the phone is entirely taken apart by specialized sites within hours of
its availability, there's no way they would manage to hide a swappable
battery.

~~~
catshirt
that is the point :)

~~~
georgemcbay
Well, iPhones don't cost $60,000 and up (nor do they weigh 5000 pounds), so
ripping one apart and voiding the warranty to see what is inside isn't nearly
as much of a big deal.

~~~
catshirt
the post i'm responding to seems contrary in tone, yet simply articulates an
implied supporting point.

it's like saying "i get the analogy [but it doesn't sound accurate to me]".
fair sentiment but not constructive.

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SCdF
It's unfortunate the video quality is so poor. Surely this should be a
marketing boon for Tesla. You'd think they'd put more effort in.

Edit: This is better quality:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlaQuKk9bFg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlaQuKk9bFg)

Edit2: An _even better_ video:
[http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap](http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap)
(thnx jlgreco)

~~~
prawn
They're still editing the proper video to show multiple angles I think. Elon
has been mentioning it on Twitter.

~~~
jlgreco
The video is now up:
[http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap](http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap)

~~~
dmourati
All of the videos are terrible. That music has got to go.

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mixedbit
I like Tesla a lot, but I also like honest marketing. 23 gallons (83 litres)
tanked during demo gives much longer range than a full battery. Accumulated
time spend at stations won't be shorter with Tesla's technology.

I think the swap is a great feature and there is no need to use questionable
marketing tricks to sell it.

~~~
StavrosK
Damn, what kind of car takes 83 litres?

Your point is what occurred to me during the video, though. It's fantastic
technology, but the comparison is a bit flawed. However, they did get two
batteries, which is still not 83 liters but it's pretty damn fast, and faster
than "too long to wait", at any rate.

~~~
switch007
An Audi A8 and some expensive S class models.

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uptown
I worked on a college team that dealt with this exact challenge. We had an
electric F1-style race car that required battery swaps half-way through the
race. In our case, the car held 24 (? - I think) large heavy batteries from
Electrosource (now out of business) that were configured in pairs, and slid in
and out of the vehicle on sleds by a pit-crew. Heavy as hell, and a real
challenge to do at a race - but functional. To see this whole thing automated
is really fascinating on both a technical and personal level. Some companies
are adding 9 seconds to video. This company is defining our future.

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jviddy
This seems to point towards a battery lease solution.

Having to worry about the relative cost of your battery vs the one you are
swapping for could make this a bit of a lottery. Also possibly bribing the
attendant to give you a much newer one instead of the old creaky pack that no
one wants.

~~~
SCdF
It looks like a great place for Tesla to find old batteries and remove them
from circulation.

Leasing seems like a good idea (pay X per year and you can use these stations
and you'll always end up with a battery of a certain acceptable quality),
according to the video though it does cost money.

~~~
lettergram
It would cost money, but I'd bet less than gasoline.

The station could use a mix of solar power, wind, power grid and charge the
batteries for probably much less $/kWh than gasoline in a car.

~~~
SCdF
It would be interesting to try to work out for certain types of people the
cost of powering an Tesla.

When you fill up a petrol / diesel engine you have one option: petrol /
diesel.

When you fill up an Tesla (and other electric cars have different
possibilities) you have:

\- Recharging on your home power, which would cost whatever your home power
costs but can only be used when you are OK charging over night \- Recharging
at one of those Tesla fast stations, which costs nothing, but takes 40min \-
Swapping a battery at a Tesla station, which takes 90 seconds and costs $??

The price then depends on the mix of those three strategies, which is
determined by your usage (drive to and from work every day, it's your home
power etc)

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Stupendous
The beauty of this is that with battery technology rapidly improving, and
performance for new batteries much better than older ones, Tesla's cars can
retain or even increase their expected mileage per charge over the life of the
car.

The expected lifespan of their batteries right now are about 7 years, but as
anyone with a smartphone or laptop knows, battery life decreases rapidly over
the life of the product. Tesla's cars were no exception to this and although
most of the cars on the road are new and have not faced these issues yet, they
were bound to crop up in the future. With battery swapping they've nipped this
problem in the bud. Of course they'll charge you the difference for a newer
battery but the benefits far outweigh the costs, and breeds stronger brand
loyalty.

~~~
sounds
I'd really like to hear more about what this means, from the article:

    
    
      Frenzied drivers will still have to do some work though —
      they’ll have to drop off the battery on the return leg of
      their journey and pay an unspecified “transport fee”, ...
    

A legitimate worry is that you'll end up with someone else's lemon battery. Is
the article referring to a Tesla mandate that you come back for your
"original" battery, and how long do you have before you forfeit your battery?

~~~
zanny
The way you would want it done is as long as you own the car you pay some
annual fee for battery swaps but then you can swap whenever you want. You
would have to sign up at the point of sale for the service and not be able to
situationally opt out whenever you weren't driving long distances with a
desire for swaps though, because the idea is that you subsidize the fact you
never need to "replace" your battery now and Tesla needs to keep up battery
stocks with some fraction of the cost each year.

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a13xnet
I wonder if technology from Better Place
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place))
was in any way an inspiration? They had developed a battery swapping system in
2007.

~~~
dgritsko
Actually, it's the other way around. Shai Agassi (founder of Better Place)
visited Tesla several years back, then went on to found Better Place after
what he saw:

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/347005150860283905](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/347005150860283905)

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VeejayRampay
The US are so lucky to have Tesla Motors. I wish we'd have such a status-quo-
shattering company in Europe.

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solarbunny
I see such swaps could be useful in next-gen electric aircrafts. It takes
quite some time to fill these.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Electric aircraft is a genuinely bad idea. Converting the electricity to fuel
and burning it is vastly more efficient than having to lift and land with both
sides of the chemical equation.

~~~
jessriedel
Do you know what the best method is for producing jet fuel (aviation turbine
fuel) in a carbon neutral way from electricity?

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Probably by ditching the electricity part and just using heat in Fischer-
Tropsch. There might be new developments, I don't know.

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ari_elle
So instead of loading my battery i just swap it with a fully charged one and
the thing is done. My old battery gets fully charged on site, and if someone
else comes along he gets my old now fully charged battery. Basically you never
have to charge your Tesla again.... 90 Seconds to "refill"... nice one

~~~
CiaranMcNulty
That's not the case, you have to either come back and pick up your battery on
the way home, or you pay for the new one.

It is however very encouraging for people worried about battery performance
that you can get a new one pretty easily.

~~~
neovive
Built-in recycling incentives. Very nice!

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lettergram
Its amazing, Tesla will control both the energy usage of their car and the
production. As opposed to the private oil companies and car manufacturers.
This would mean they could get profits never dreamed of.

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softbuilder
Seemed super fake because of that one lady/superfan. I'm not suggesting the
audience was seeded - it's more likely just a few ass kissers in the crowd -
but wow, that really just killed any genuine enthusiasm I would have had while
watching.

Edit: The enthusiasm seemed fake, not the actual tech being demonstrated,
which seems straight-forward.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I feel sorry for people who seem to live in a world where enthusiasm is alien
and unfamiliar.

~~~
softbuilder
There's so much fake/forced enthusiasm around many startups that after a while
the it's pretty easy to spot. (Example: The person exclaiming "What the...?"
at the beginning, when everyone knew what was going to be shown. C'mon.) The
really sad thing is people trying to will things to be more exciting than they
really are.

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lifeformed
I wonder how the payment will work? Do you still have to get out of your car
and swipe your card? It'd be cool if your car was linked to some online
account that you could manage, so the whole thing can be done without stepping
outside.

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tome
It's impossible to see how the swap is actually being accomplished.

~~~
jlgreco
It appears they jack up the car, drop the floor out from under it, unbolt and
drop the battery, bring another battery up under and re-bolt it. A very simple
procedure that is likely rather difficult to implement; interesting to think
about what sort of machinery they have down in the pit to move the batteries
around...

~~~
foobarian
Definitely some interesting little details to iron out. The alignment should
be easy. Just have to park within some tolerance, and the unbolting platform
can rotate to adjust.

I wonder about the unbolting. What if one of the (what seemed like) dozen
screwdriver bits fails? Screw the rest back on and fail the procedure? Also
can the re-bolting fail, e.g. by dropping the bolt? Would your car end up with
fewer and fewer bolts over time? I guess the system should have a reservoir of
bolts that it can reuse.

Also wonder how this would handle east coast winters, what with all the ice
that gets caked on the undercarriage.

All in all I'm jealous of the engineers at Tesla who get to work on it :)

~~~
drharris
> All in all I'm jealous of the engineers at Tesla who get to work on it :)

This. I love my job, but this had me extremely jealous. This stuff is the
_future_.

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taylorwc
This is a super cool idea, and I love Tesla for just this sort of thing... but
it's conjuring an amusing parallel to a Pony Express rider swapping horses.

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Jack000
Very impressive. Although some of the details pour cold water on the dream of
hot-swap road trips (ship the battery back?)

~~~
sudhirj
It seems to be free if you come back and get the battery you dropped off -
which seems to makes it possible to drive across the country with no more than
90-second battery stops, and drop them all back off taking the same route
back.

Don't know if they'll be okay with that, but it's an awesome possibility.
That's thousands of miles with free (renewable) energy and fast.

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orenbarzilai
Can understand how come betterplace isn't mentioned even once in this article.

~~~
freehunter
Well their Wikipedia page starts off with "Better Place __was __a venture-
backed international company... "

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orenbarzilai
It's still exists (probably not for long). But recently after they failed
publicly many critics claimed that battery swap model won't work, I guess that
the guys in tesla disagree. Thus the compassion is required.

~~~
jessriedel
Needless to say this doesn't make much sense. There are so many confounding
factors in the business of electric cars it's silly to take one company's
failure as evidence that a particular subset of their technology is bad.

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edwardunknown
What are the chances of getting a standard battery size in these things? I'd
be a shame for stations to need a hundred different batteries for every make
and model.

~~~
peteforde
Tesla X is built on the same chassis (and therefore, battery pack) as Tesla S.

